Two more things off the checklist

Last week was a pretty big week. First off, Miranda got her cast off which means her strut is starting to look a little more human and a little less like an orangutan (she is still swinging her arms wildly back and forth with every step--it's something we're working on). It also means that she gets to go in the water and that means that the rest of us can go in the water with significantly less guilt. Our experience at the hospital here was painless and positive and, building on the tremendous support we received at the IWK, we've got a daughter that's practically good as new.

The next big event of the week was finding a piano. It was a little discouraging last week when Julie and I hit the town in search of a piano that would meet her standards. We could only find two places in the entire city that sold pianos. One specialized in a Chinese brand we had never heard of called Pearl river, and the other place was a shop that specialized in all things Yamaha. Neither option was going to work. We had pretty much come to the conclusion that we'd have to go to Dubai to find what we were looking for and that wasn't going to happen until we procured a vehicle of some sort (something I'm trying to put off as long as I possibly can). Julie was disappointed, but to her credit not despondent. I made one last desperate search on-line and came up with a used Kawai that was only a couple of blocks away from us. There wasn't a picture with the listing, so we didn't get our hopes up, but we gave it a shot anyway. The piano ended up being more than we could have hoped for. There's a little bit of wear on the pedals and metal hinges, but, apart from that, it's in great condition, far better and far less than anything we saw while out on our search.

The instinct is to haggle over everything here. If you don't at least try, then you can't help feeling that you might have spent a little too much. When I asked Julie if I should offer a lower price, she wouldn't entertain the idea. It wasn't worth the risk.

The piano was delivered the next day and the day after that we had it tuned. We've still got to address the acoustics with a couple of rugs, but it sounds great and makes the apartment feel a little more like home. It was the piano more than any of the documentation that gave me a sense of security and comfort

Parting with our piano in Nova Scotia was one of the few possessions that was actually more difficult than it was freeing. When we had bought that piano, we were sure that it was going to be the piano we had for the rest of our lives, and believing that led us form a somewhat stronger than usual attachment to the instrument, so we're feeling pretty blessed to have music back in our home. Whether our neighbours are feeling the same level of gratitude or not is another question entirely.