Who's the man? Yeah, that's right.

Happy to let you all know that I have won the internship in Aspen and will be spending ten weeks of my summer in the Rocky Mountains! Sweet.

Details to follow.

My new #1 guy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dH3GSrCmzC8

Birdy num nums

Just a quick update.

Things went pretty well in my first paying gig this Thursday. It's pretty cheesy but as I was getting ready at home that morning I heard a bird singing outside - first time in 2008 I heard one - and took it as a good omen. The job went well and Mrs. X asked me back again this week to do some more work. While I was there I got a call from Merriam music and I went by there in the afternoon to do some tuning in their showroom and got paid a bit for that. And while I was there two people approached me in the showroom asking if I do private work. Well, duh.

Earlier in the week I met Madeline's new piano teacher and I think I can work a bunch of referrals out of that as well.

Feeling really good and off to a good start. While still in school even. I'm verklempt.


And, I'm going to go ahead and take the free baby grand piano I mentioned in an earlier post. I mean what the hell. It's hard to go wrong and I think I can put a couple thousand bucks into it and maybe make a thousand, plus have my first, low risk, rebuilding job. And if I like it enough I'll just keep the damn thing.

Must drink now.

I drink therefore I am

At the moment I'm enjoying a well deserved cocktail on Friday night after a busy week (thanks for the housewarming gift Nav), and I'm about to go off on another break from school for reading week, more popularly known as 'slack week'.

There's a fair bit to update on at the moment and some pretty cool stuff coming up, but despite it all, and despite the fact that it's an old fashioned cold, snowy winter, the middle of February still sucks the big one! There's just something about the dead of winter...

Next week will be a pretty busy one:

• tomorrow is Poonjambi at Nav's place, a fancy name for a good ol' drink up and all day jam session at Nav's place in Greensville. Haven't played with the boys for a couple of months so it should be fun
• laying a new hardwood floor in the family room at home. The old rug in there is disgusting and still bears the scars of our old cat Norman wiping his ass on it. Go figure that there are 5 or 6 rooms in the house with carpeting but he liked to regularly wipe off his cling-ons in the family room.
• I have my first customer next week! It's actually a referral from Anne (one of the instructors at UWO) and is an old wreck of a piano - can't wait! I guess I better get my shit together and figure out what my rates are...
  
• I'm supposed to work at Merriam for a half day or whatever next week but I haven't firmed anything up yet.
• I had two very promising interviews for the internships this summer but am just waiting to hear back from them.
• I have a line on a free grand piano! There is a lady in Guelph who's been trying to get UWO to take the piano into the course for a refurb like the ones we're doing this term, but for one reason and another Anne doesn't want it, and the owner can't afford to do the job privately, so it is kind of 'free to a good home' at this point. If it plays I'll take it, then if I don't get to it for a year or two so what. Squeezing it into the house will be another matter but that's a good problem to have. At this point I'm not sure I can do much more with the old upright we got last autumn, but it's filled its role of giving me something to practice on during weekends and gotten Maddy back into playing the piano and taking lessons.
• The class has scattered to the four corners, well sort of anyway. Joan is off to Wintergrass in Washington state, Michael is down to NC to visit with the missus, Ryan and Ian have gone to Florida to apply for a Master's Piano Technician program, and most of the others are either heading home or hanging in London.

And by the way, thanks to many of you for your comments by email, but remember you can also post your comments right here in the blog where others can see them too.

Cheers!

Holy crap nice weather

I'm writing to you from the lounge of the fabulous Festival Inn in Stratford Ontario. I was here doing some work on pianos at the Stratford Festival complex and due to some seriously strong winds and blowing snow, all the roads out of town are closed. In a way I'm relieved because I was driving out of town this afternoon and was really very nervous about the road conditions and poor visibility but would've felt like a wuss turning around. This way the police made the decision for me. Today I was actually standing on the stage in the picture you see here, where some of the world's greatest actors have stood. Didn't feel a thing.

Last week I had a couple of interviews for some internships this summer at the Tanglewood and Aspen summer music festivals. I kind of have mixed feelings about these - they will be 10 weeks across June, July and August and while they are a great opportunity to keep learning and basically get paid for going to school, it would also be another ten weeks away from the family and I'm worried about the load poor Dale is carrying, although the thought of spending the summer in the Rocky Mountains is pretty appealing. The interviews went well I thought; I'm pretty good at telling people what they want to hear by this point in life so I'm pretty optimistic about my chances. Aspen, Colorado seems to be the happening place compared to Tanglewood in western Massachusetts but it sure is a lot further away. Oh well, nice to think about the choices anyway.

I've got a bunch of new pics to upload but can't really manage that at the moment what with being unexpectedly stranded here and all. My kingdom for a toothbrush.

A little sample

Here's Joan showing off on Betty. It's kinda hard to tell on my crappy camera but you can sort of hear that the tone of this piano is a little nasty.

I really have to get me one of these...

http://www.metasonix.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=36&Itemid=67