A New Toy! Joy!

The place where I work has a board for classifieds that I check regularly for both amusement (people trying to sell their apartment in overpriced piecemeal) and the occasional deal ($20 iMac, anyone?). Early this week I checked and saw an ad that read "Organ for Sale", which went on to list a working Hammond organ without a price. I did some quick research, quickly became enamored with the notion of owning one, and shot an email asking the price. She replied "It's yours if you want it." Let it not be said that I'm one to pass on some free organ.

The only problem is that, being an honest to god non-transistor, tonewheel organ, I found it was likely to weight between three and four hundred pounds. I emailed Slim Jim to ask if he were coming around this weekend, if he'd be able to bring the trailer for his car. Plans came together frantically on Friday night to pick it up on Saturday. Of course, Saturday, it was raining, hard. I bought a dolly and a couple tarps from the hardware store as D.M.H. waited at my place for Slim Jim. I was fretting over whether to move it or not, since I doubted that rain would be friendly to a complex electromechanical machine, moving a heavy awkward object would only be more difficult with tarps hanging from it, and to top it off, the Mistress wasn't feeling well. Sunday was out though, and when the sun broke through the clouds, we decided to go for it.

The woman giving it away was very nice and accommodating as we invaded her home with tarps, duct tape, and a dolly. We just had gotten the organ to the door when rain started coming down sideways. She invited us to take our time and tarp the organ up, and by the time we were finished it was only raining lightly. It took us an hour, maybe more to get from the house to being situated on the trailer. The sun finally broke again just as we finished tying it down, and I enjoyed a moment of satisfaction before the stress of making sure it stayed on the trailer during the drive home. Getting it in my house was much easier than getting it out of hers, and we were all happy to find out when we unwrapped it in my kitchen like an overgrown redneck Christmas gift that everything had remained dry. It turned right on (as right on as old organs turn) and played! Behold:





It came with a bunch of song books, but they're hard for me to use, as I don't know what note each key is (I can find middle C and extrapolate from there), and I don't know my treble clef well (Every Good Boy Does Fine!). Instead I've been trying to learn songs by ear. My first goal is a song from the Battlestar Galactica soundtrack called Roslin and Adama (NERD!). It is a beautiful, moving piece that I will inevitably suck every last ounce of subtlety and grace from. In the mean time, I can wait for the Dark Mistress to come over and then pretend I'm scoring a soap opera while she tries to have a conversation with me.

Yes, It was I who ate all the ice cream. (MINOR CHORD!) And you know what? It was damn good.