Pianos, Fevers, Franz klammer, Debbie Reynolds, and Carrie Fisher

This is the best picture I could find online, but it doesn't do the instrument justice. The Kawai satin oak is a lovely finish if you want natural wood without gloss, and the sound is great considering the price. My mom's is a bit darker and has  more red in the wood.

one of Elton John's flashy Yamahas

Steinway = pure quality

Boston gives a consumer Steinway-like quality at a more affordable price.

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If there's only one day for it, I will ski rather than snowboard. a person does not travel all the way to the land of Franz Klammer to snowboard. I haven't skied since my leg was broken when I was fifteen. I'm a bit nervous, especially if the slopes are crowded, but I will be cautious and give the right-of-way to anyone who wants it. It's still possible to fall and get hurt, but I'm careful.

Claudia's parents have a Bosendorfer piano. I don't get the hype where bosendorfer pianos are concerned. They're damned expensive for one thing. At the upper end, Steinways are as expensive, but I don't think you can get a new Bosendorfer grand of any kind in the U.S. (they may be a bit more reasonable here nearer where they're made) for under $70,000.  They're supposed to be so much more nuanced than Steinways where delicate passages are concerned. I can play delicate passages with the best of them, but, all things considered, I think my mom's Boston or even my Kawai gives at least as nice a sound, if not nicer,  to delicate passages.

Claudia has a 9-foot Steinway with an ebony satin finish. I personally prefer the high gloss finish, but steinway hasn't made their ebonies with high gloss finishes for all that long. Regardless, it has a very nice sound. Claudia lets me play it as much as I want, since I can't do much of anything else.

Some people in the U.S. buy Yamaha grands and honestly delude themselves into thinking they're getting Steinway-quality pianos. If you want a grand and cannot afford a Steinway, there is nothing wrong with buying a Yamaha, but a person is delusional who believes he or she is getting Steinway quality  from his or her Yamaha piano. For that matter, Kawai is superior to Yamaha in the opinions of far more people than just myeslf. Kawai doesn't get quite the hype Yamaha does because it doesn't do custom funky-colored pianos for people such as Elton John or Liberace. (Actually, I think it was Baldwin with whom Liberace had the deal.) Kawai does what it does very well. If a person wants a Kawai, he or she must select from the models Kawai makes. (Perhaps Kawai makes secret deals with artists to glam up pianos by painting nude bodies on them or whatever, but if such is the case, it is a well-kept secret.)

The whole Carrie Fisher/Debbie Reynolds thing was a bit eerie, though perhaps understandable. There can't be anything much more difficult and stressful for a parent than watching his or her child die and planning the funeral. It's not much of a stretch to see how that sort of thing could send an older person to a fatal stroke. I wish the deaths had happened in the reverse order so that Debbie Reynolds did not have to be aware of her daughter's death. it has to be easier for an adult child to bury a parent, especially once the parent has reached at least middle age,  than the reverse.

I'm still fighting this bugger of an illness but my temp is only 102 now. I'll ski as soon as my temp has been no higher than 98.6 for 24 hours.