It's Sunday evening, and I'm sprawled out across the dining room table in London studying for the physics final exam, and enjoying a glass of well deserved wine. Funny but I've been off the booze pretty much since I started school which is the opposite of what I expected. Kind of hard to justify spending money on the stuff when Dale is at home clipping coupons...
The week is going to be pretty hectic, relatively speaking, in that I have final exams Wed, Thu and Fri. Well, the exams for the actual piano tech part of the course are more like what they call a practicum, in other words it's really just delivery of some work that is going to get looked over by the instructors. Nonetheless there's just a ton of stuff to go over and make sure everything is perfect, and on Friday we do actually have the major tuning test to close out the term. The tuning has been a little touch and go of late, and of course that's where I'll be making most of my money going forward so I'm very focused on it. I've got stuck on what particular area, and to be honest I can't tell if it's always been like this and I couldn't hear it before but now my ear has improved, or rather my work is actually deteriorating. Reminds me of fucking golf in a way. Physics I'm not too worried about; I've got about 75% average and the final counts for 40% of the total grade, so I figure I have a good margin for error and will comfortably pass but I'd still like to make a good go of it, for bragging rights if nothing else.
Our project piano is just about ready to go out the door, although I believe we'll give it a going over after the Christmas break and then send it off. Really looking forward to the grand pianos coming in for next term and getting started on those because we haven't really done much on grands other than tune them. And as I have learned a little about them I can see that in many ways they are much less complicated machines than upright pianos, which is probably not what many people, myself included, would expect.
So there is the last week of term 1 all laid out before me, then a 3 week break during which I will cuddle my kid on the couch as much as I possibly can, and I believe there's some talk of laying a new hardwood floor on the family room, and I will continue to work away on the piano at home. And I will also be spending some time visiting retailers and piano shops in my area and introducing myself. I've even made up some business cards whoop-de-doo.
I sure do miss my girls.
