Friends Becoming Bolder

My friendly Blue Tongue Lizard came back for a visit.  To tell you the truth, I can't figure out if this one is a male or female.  I know that the males have pointier 'noses', and the females have wider heads.  This one's nose looks pretty pointed to me...

I do know that the males are the wanderers, and the females tend to stay put.  I also have a massive Blue Tongue that likes to sun bake between my retaining wall and my front steps but she's very skittish. If I can catch her sun baking, I'll take a photo.

 Out the back of my yard, lazing away in the sun and waiting for grapes.

 "Grapes, I said.  Not cassava melon!!"

Bluey's back leg appears to have healed nicely, and its tale has healed too, although I think it might take a loooooong time to grow back.

 "Excuse me human, have you got any grapes for me today?

I certainly did.  Bluey ate 8 grapes.  I had to chop them up in thirds, of course.

Dear Bluey, how can you even fit that many grapes inside your body?

Bluey was a very content lizard after all those grapes.  He/she was so keen on grapes, it was licking my fingers before I even put the grapes down.  For a lizard who was hissing at me 3 weeks ago to being this tame is a slight worry :D  If it stays in our yard, no harm will come to it.

Yard that is.  Not the house ;D

Piano Tuning

I felt so guilty about not looking after our piano properly for so long - it costs a bit of money to keep a piano maintained especially if you are teaching on it every day, have two children practising it every day, not to mention your own practise.

I had been meaning to get my piano tuned for years but didn't quite have the cash flow to justify it (silly, I know).

I had the number of a brilliant piano tuner, had the cash in hand to do it in December/January but couldn't get hold of him.

Finally in February after some Google searching and other enquiries, I found out that he passed away.  Such a shame - I didn't have the privilege of meeting him.  I did look up the Australasian Piano Tuners and Technicians Association (http://www.aptta.org.au/) and found the name of a local guy who was accredited with them.

I am happy to say that he did a brilliant job, and my piano is back in working order (still a practice pedal to be tightened up but that wasn't part of tuning).

I didn't realise just how much having an out of tune piano was messing with my sense of pitch.  The piano wasn't sounding honky tonky, but it certainly wasn't in tune.  I found it was harder to play in tune on my violin - not a good thing when you're a violin teacher.  It is so much easier now.  What a difference!  When you're playing the violin, the finger being 1 millimetre out can make a big difference.

It was $190 for about an hour of tuning.  Standard price for members of the APTTA.  I was happy to pay that.

Just in case you were wondering what the inside of a piano looks like, here you go:

Something else I found out: Piano Tuners mark carefully the inside of the piano when they tune it so the next tuner knows how long it has been since the last tune-up.  This one was tuned in Tamworth last!  How about that!! Apparently they mark it in chalk, so it can be wiped off easily and not do any damage.