September 10, 2005

Today is a massive “work on the house” day for us. I was up very early – well, very early for me – at 6:45. Eric picked me up just before 7:00 and we drove down the street to my neighbor Rob’s house were Eric and I and a group of guys were getting together to move Rob’s old piano out into the yard so that it could be broken down for the garbage men to take away and then we were going to go down to a house a few “country blocks” away to get Rob’s “new” piano and bring that back to his house. The old piano was extremely heavy and it took a number of guys to be able to move it. It was probably after 8:00 by the time we finally got the old piano out of the house. It was a large upright piano that was old enough that it didn’t even have handles on the back to move it with. That didn’t make it very much fun to move. And taking it up and down the porch steps was a real joy too. The unit weighed in at over 800 pounds so this was definitely a heavy piano.

After getting the two pianos moved everyone went out and got to demolish the old piano so that all of the pieces would be able to fit into the garbage truck. Eric and Rob’s friend Vince who is a senior biology major at SUNY Geneseo took turns blasting it apart with a heavy awl. That made short work of it. Even the cast iron that held the strings in place was able to be broken up in that way. The final bit of the sound board was gone through with a small chainsaw to get it into small enough pieces.

Eric drove me back home around 10:30. He needed to get home to do some work but I convinced him to help me out for a little bit. We quickly cleaned up most of the floor in Andy’s old room and he helped me bring two of my large computer desks up from the basement and get them into the room. It was no small task. Those desks are large and heavy and very difficult to navigate up and down stairways. But we got them up with only minor wall damage.

Then we finally got a chance to shower and then dad picked Min and I up and we all went over to the Omega Grill for some lunch. It was barely noon and already I was worn out for the day. My feet were really sore. I am pretty good about lifting things intelligently but the bottom of my feet sure took a beating today.

After lunch Dominica and I began painting the bathroom. Super rich pink. It is like a slightly darker version of Pepto-Bismal. Everyone that has seen it has agreed that that is most definitely the colour that is most closely resembles. While we were painting it with the first coat, Jeremy arrived from work. He has been working down at the college for the last several weeks. He is washing dishes in one of the cafeterias there. He came over this afternoon so that he could get a chance to play on the MUD since he doesn’t have any good way to play from home. So he camped out in the living room while we worked on painting the bathroom.

The bathroom ended up taking two coats to get it to look good. In between bouts of working on the painting I was working on putting the office together in Andy’s old room. I cleaned the room today and Eric and I got the furniture in there. I let Min try her hand at doing the data cabling that needed to be done since she is taking an A+ class and will seldom have a chance to do any real cabling at all. So she did that and then I started moving in all of the computer equipment from the other room and getting all of the connections set up in the office.

Jeremy went home at 10:00. Just before he left, Art and Danielle stopped by. Art had been working on building us some shelves for the master bedroom closet and he had finished them up today and had brought them over to install. That is really going to help because right now almost all of my clothing is being kept in Andy’s old room until we get everything situated. So this is going to allow us to move all of that stuff back into our bedroom and no more need to get dressed on the other side of the house.

I didn’t get to bed until well after 2:00 am but it was just so nice having the new office together at least and Oreo just loves that room so he was hanging out with me until very late.

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