Not Built in a Day

Here she is, my new Yamaha Clavinova CLP-625. Overall, I have been very happy with it.  The sound is good - I play mostly with headphones - and the interface is easy to use; no screen, just buttons, and not too many weird options.  The touch is good, it feels like a real upright, while the size is much more compact than an upright.  It fights neatly in our apartment, isn't very heavy, and has all the features I need (admittedly, not many).  It came with the bench and standard pedals, the music stand, and a hook for hanging your headphones.  All in all, everything I wanted, and very little extra. And now the saga of how we bought our piano: For the last few years, my only access to a piano has been either accompanying J to the sketchy music rooms his company provides, or going to my church to play during off hours.  We rarely went to the sketchy music rooms, so mostly I would practice at church -- or rather, wouldn't, since I rarely went there...

I can't believe that somehow the rest of the the year slipped away without any more posts... so I'll just have to make up for it now! *************************** By Day 3 of the second week, The Experiment was already over.  Three more days of commuting and I was done.  On that Wednesday, I took the train to San Jose, met my co-worker, took a Lyft to our site meeting, then Lyft back to the office.  Then after work I went with another co-worker to an event in San Jose, then took the train back up to San Francisco.  So I left the apartment at 7am to get on the train, and then got back at 10:45pm.  It was grueling, and I was so tired that when I got home, I wrote a mostly incomprehensible post about how tired I was, that I will spare you from reading. By Day 4 (Thursday) of the second week, J and I agreed that we were not moving to San Francisco.  He had been sick most of the first week, so he wasn't taking the train, which meant he started in earnest o...