Monday, June 25, 2012

Unexpected Gifts from God... piano, vacuum

DIGITAL PIANO
For months (years?? I don't know Glenn is the craigslist guy) we have been looking at digital pianos. Since we move so often getting a normal piano doesn't make sense but we'd like the kids to learn how to play and they do make decent digital ones that are much more portable.  I asked a man from the flute choir that works at a piano shop for advice as to what to look for and he said that we should look for weighted keys and ear plug things with the option to record. We have seen many on CL over the time that we've been looking and have inquired about a few and even checked some out at Guitar Center but have never made the jump to purchase one.  A couple of weeks ago we were invited, after church, over to a friend's house for smores. While there we were shown some changing around that they were doing and were shown a piano that they just decided that day that they didn't want there anymore but couldn't decide if they were going to sell it, give it away, or put it up in the attic. They told us that we could borrow for now/ buy or possibly just have at the end of our time here. Not all the keys work because there had been a drink or two spilled on it but it sure has been fun to play around with a piano in our own home again (even if the random B plays loud enough to wake the dead ;). Thanks Tim and Sally for the use of this piano!

VACUUM
When moving from Syracuse we had no idea what our apartment would look like or what the flooring was like. We owned a canister vacuum that someone had left behind in an apartment that we lived in but it didn't do that great of a job on hardwoods so we doubted that it would do a good job on carpet if that was what we were moving into so we curbed it as we were moving from Syracuse. We've had hardwoods for the last 5ish years so there wasn't really a need for a good vacuum. Since moving here we have kept our eyes out for vacuums at yard sales and on CL and at stores and online but there are too many options out there and a corn broom and a dust pan does a decent job. We really would prefer to never live in a carpeted home again after these 10 months so we were having a hard time deciding how good of a vacuum to get (decision making, as you may or may not have noticed, is not a strong point for us). Anyway, a couple of weeks ago some friends were coming from Watertown to go on a field trip at the Windmill Farm. Afterwards they came over to our house to play and have lunch. As they were leaving they said, "Wait, we have a gift for you" and they brought out of the back of their vehicle a vacuum cleaner and gave me the gift receipt from Sam's. I was shocked and very thankful. A corn broom does work well but it sure takes a lot of time (I discovered after using the vacuum that a corn broom doesn't work quite as well as I had thought). Thanks John and Michele for your generous gift!


NOTE: I started this blog a  couple of weeks ago but stopped when Google gave me an error message telling me that I had used up my 1gb of photo space that I was allowed for free for my blogs. Since I haven't decided whether to go back and shrink all my photos and re-insert them (anybody want a job?? That is going to take forever!) or just pay google for more space there are no pictures for this post and you will just have to use your imagination or click on links that I put of things that look like them, though I am not 100% certain that any of the links are exactly correct.