Pianos, Fried Chicken and a Place to Sleep

Last night turned into an impromptu killer night.  Even though I had to study, we also took some time out to go get a Futon for Trish.  Turns out that there was a guy selling one for $30 on craigslist.  Score!  However, we also found out that while we arranged to go there for 7PM, the seller  indicated there was another guy coming over at 6PM to look at it!  The race was on!

Trish picked me up after work and she gave me the standard warnings on how you can’t open the windows in the backseat because they will remain stuck in the down position.  I had a chuckle about this and suggested she tape a warning label onto the actual button so people don’t automatically roll them down!

When we got to Trish’s, we decided to order the unthinkable…Kentucky Fried Chicken.  All my work at lowering my cholesterol can be squashed with one instance of this fabled meal!  Trish always talks about KFC so we decided to go for it.  We phoned Mike who was picking up his replacement guitar (which is a beaut) and arranged for him to pick up some chicken.  We also phoned Vero and gave her the heads up.  Before we knew it, we were gorging on the amazingness which is fried chicken, potato and macaroni salad, fries and the oh so strange looking gravy!

Afterwards, we rushed to this seller’s house and we made it in time!  The futon was also in amazing condition and there was no point in thinking about it…Trish slapped the $30 in his hand and we made way with the futon.  The futon was actually a lot lighter than my metal framed one seeing that it was the wooden one.  It was a cinch to take out of the apartment and into Mike’s truck.  We also picked up a bulletin board that he was getting rid of and I sneakily gave it to Trish as we left for the night.

So now Trish has a primo Futon in her living room.  A Futon for the price of a case of beer!  Bonus!

On some better news for the night, Trish lent me her piano/keyboard which will be an amazing addition to the instrument collection.  She will start showing me the ropes on how to play the piano over the next 16 years.  The beautiful part about the keyboard is that it has a MIDI connection and thanks to the MIDI cable that Matt gave me last Christmas (thanks mate!), I can plug it into the laptop and interface with Logic Pro.

What does all mean to you folks?  Well, it opens up a world of possibilities in musical creation.  Imagine that there are virtual instruments on the computer.  Let’s say I wanted to have some trumpet on my song.  I load up the ‘trumpet’ virtual instrument and if I hit the C note on the piano, it sends a signal and I hear a C note from a trumpet from my speakers.  You can have all sorts of instruments…guitars, horns, strings…

You even get into crazier things like church choirs, sound effects, african drum beats, ambient music…it is quite awe-inspiring that Pandora’s box lay before me and all I have to do is hit a key.  I am working towards first adding some strings to Troy’s new tune ‘So It Goes’.  We both think it will add a lot to the song and now that I have the piano in the room, it will make it easier.

But the night descended into more studying for my micro economics final exam.  Equations were all jumbled in my head and I must admit that I’m a lot more confused than I was a few nights ago.  I think I have over studied and my brain has officially melted a bit.  I guess we’ll find out around 5:30 tonight!