(diaryland) August 18, 2003 - 6:42 p.m.

I don't know about you, but I enjoy practicing piano for four hours a day.

Things get pretty tough, though, when you play the same twiddly thing badly eighteen thousand times and people scream at you to get the fuck off the piano.

I especially moved out of my parents' house so I could practice piano whenever I wanted to. This was because my Dad hates piano, and it's also near the TV. I'd zoom home from university and get two seconds of practice in before he would yell, "Arg! Please! I've got a headache!"

And if he didn't have a headache, one or two of fifty-three aunties or uncles or cousins from New Zealand would be snoozing with their head on the piano stool in some kind of jet-lagged state.

This pissed me off.

So, what did I do? I simply moved into a house that didn't even have a piano.

This presented an entirely new set of problems; the most pressing being that there wasn't even a piano.

So, I spent a year like that and somehow managed to pass a piano exam without actually owning a piano.

Then, suddenly I got one. Things got exciting. But, then, I discovered that the sleeping patterns of Roland and Diane are so unusual and remarkable that at any given time of day, excepting early afternoon, one of them is invariably tucked away in bed. And, of course, the piano is right next to both their bedrooms.

So I still can't practice four hours a day, even in my own house, which I especially moved into so I could.

This is fucked up.

But, I am learning some wack Liszt shit. It has the exciting title of Concert Study 3. The music is a whole bunch of pointy triangles.

I think I want to become a gardener.