A picture is worth a thousand words (saying invented by advertising executive Fred R. Barnard in 1921, along with invented attribution to ancient Japanese philosopher).

In normal times, one can take a two-hour tour of the Steinway & Sons factory (not one of those dangerous three-hour tours with Gilligan and the Skipper) in the Astoria neighborhood of Queens, New York. Now that I’m a non-certified member of the piano-building community, I might want to drop in sometime and compare notes with the resident artisans.

On the other hand, it takes them at least nine months to build a grand piano, whereas I’m on pace to finish in no more than two weeks, so what could I really learn from them. Still, they’ve been doing it for over 160 years, so maybe I should consider their two-year paid apprenticeship program, although the commute could be a problem.

Also, they require the ability to understand technically complex instruction. But clearly I’ve already proven that I can do that, most of the time, with only the occasional, major mistake requiring hours of work to undo it, and the occasional left-over piece.

I took a deep breath and did a full Poseidon on the piano, turning it upside down in one quick, but carefully planned motion, to work on the underbelly of the beast, which now laid helpless before me like a giant tortoise flipped onto its shell.

Working quickly, in case the batteries I had installed had some unknown, nefarious, self-generating ability that was not included in the instructions as part of LEGO’s devious, seemingly unstoppable strategy for world domination, I constructed and attached the three legs (there goes the tortoise analogy) and the pedals (yes, Virginia, my plastic piano has pedals).

I feel like I should be done, but I’m only halfway home. The groundhog must have seen its shadow.

(Aerial pan of fireworks, with background noise of crowd cheering) (Camera zooms in on a pair of hands inserting the last of six batteries into place, closing and screwing tight the cover to their holder, and pushing the holder back into place in the bowels of a plastic grand piano)

Yes, it’s true. Despite the gloomy prognostication of the online article I cited yesterday, in a moment of inspiration I found a way to make up for my earlier omission and right the ship, or piano if you will, with a set of batteries I found hiding in the back corner of a drawer that probably have no power left in them.

But that’s for another day. Now I’m thinking that there isn’t anything I can’t do, except maybe hit a curve ball. And then I see that the next step is to construct the legs by first turning what I’ve done so far upside down, which will immediately reveal any construction flaws up to this point and scatter random pieces to the wind.

After watching yesterday’s Mars landing, I’m only a little less impressed with the fact that I’ve made it to bag nine (out of 21). There are so many similarities to our missions that I don’t want to take the time now to point them all out.

I will, however, mention that Curiosity’s “seven minutes of terror” during descent pales in comparison to the 15 seconds of horror and disgust I experienced when I read a review of the grand piano (a few days too late I’m afraid) that made a point of warning against not inserting the batteries during bag three procedures, because, as I discovered today, there is absolutely no way to insert them now without undoing a lot of work, which is not going to happen. In other words, failure is an option.

The piano will still look good when completed. it just won’t be functional, like when I forget to turn on my digital piano before starting to play it. The silver lining – no power means no audible mistakes.