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.

The good news is that it’s starting to look like a grand piano, or at least the inside of a plastic one. I haven’t committed to getting the batteries yet, and am hopeful that I won’t be sealing in their compartment such that I’d have to take the whole thing apart to insert them. They wouldn’t do that to me, would they?

The bad news is there appear to be two small missing pieces from bag number seven (in fairness to the hard-working elves in Denmark, bag number seven did contain two similar, useless, extra pieces).

The good news is that the missing pieces don’t appear to be necessary in terms of holding the piano together or making sound.

The bad news is I don’t yet know that for certain. I may have to book a trip to Billund, where there are 25 acres of themed parks that include 40 million blocks of Lego, and “borrow” what I need. In the meantime, see if you can find where the pieces belong in the picture.

It’s been 100 years since the magician P.T. Selbit first sawed someone in half in front of an audience. I bet those early rehearsals were fun. I wonder how many assistants he went through before he got it right.

I won’t be performing, especially playing the piano, before an audience any time soon, but I’m starting to think that my LEGO piano might soon, as in before all the recent snow melts (April?), be ready for prime time. Only 375 more pages of instructions to go. The real trick will be finding someone who can tune it properly.

Through unparalleled perseverance (up around 125% effort, which is significantly more than the 110% effort that has become commonplace among professional football players, or so we are told weekly by the mathematics professors calling the games), and by actually paying attention to the instructions, I slayed yesterday’s version of the impenetrable Nemean lion without having to call for help, and without losing a finger, as Hercules had done before subduing the aforementioned monster.

As I move into the phase of constructing parts of the piano that are supposed to move in unison (with the aid of batteries not included, and not yet in my possession, as they are of a size that is not used for any of the 17 other battery-powered items I own), I am overcome by the realization that there’s no faking it. My LEGO Saturn V rocket might or might not hold together if somehow launched (I’d go with the under), but I’ll never know. There’ll be no wondering on the piano.

In case there was any ever doubt, I‘ve now established that I’m officially a nerd, as I sit around constructing my LEGO grand piano while listening to Merriam-Webster podcasts of Word Matters, which is described as being for “anyone who ever loved their English class”, which, actually, I didn’t. Yet here I am.

This current construction project almost stopped before it started, the box containing the pieces weighing in at somewhere between 13 and 250 pounds, but, with the help of an online weightlifting video, I executed my best clean and jerk, sans the jerk (but not the geek), and lifted the container off the ground without adding to my current list of 12 chronic injuries.

After surveying the 3662 pieces, I flew through the instructions until number 110 (out of 840), when I reached a roadblock that may require a phone call to LEGO headquarters in Denmark, and most definitely was an excuse for diverting my current attention to less geeky endeavors, like writing a blog about putting together a LEGO grand piano.