Top ten reasons why finishing my piano is taking so long

10) It won't cooperate. Let's face it: even inanimate objects can be a bitch sometimes. This thing goes out of tune if I look at it cross-eyed. It's discouraging.
9) Runner's knee. Had it for four weeks. Doctor says I'm not a five-foot-five, 110-pound Ethiopian and that I need to run in shoes instead of barefoot or flats. Seriously, though, the single most painful activity with runner's knee is standing - the required posture for tuning a square grand.
8) I can't see the end so I'm reluctant to work toward it. I don't know what else to say about that.

I guess there are only three reasons.

Day 90 –Sunday, June 26 – Rain outside, gloom inside

Goals: Work on it

Music: Doing some tuning, so none.

A bad case of runners knee and cloudy skies and the threat (and actual falling) of rain more or less forced me to work on the piano. A while back when I inserted the keys, I realized that I had some double strings that I had tuned as if they were singles, meaning that my piano was severely under-tuned in the lower register. I set about correcting that. So, to be sure I had everything correct, I started at middle A, which, diligent readers will remember, I tuned to G# to lower the stress on the piano. Unfortunately, I seemed to have miscounted, probably because of the double strings I counted as singles, and what should have been G# was actually at F. Cripes!

So, starting at middle A, I moved everything up so that all the keys would be a half tone flat. That meant tightening everything. That meant finding some pins that couldn’t hold tune because of the increased stress. I wanted to get at least half the keyboard done, but standing up in that awkward posture made my knee start hurting too much, so I wasn’t quite able to do half the keyboard. And at that, I had four strings that were untunable. I might try for a whole tone down to see if that makes life any easier for me. Anyway, I could only work for an hour and half, but that was enough. The piano is getting closer and closer to being a decorative piece and not a musical instrument. I swear if things don’t start going right with it pretty soon, I’m turning the sucker into a bar.