Word of the Day: festinate

festinate (adj, tr. v)

Hasty, or to hurry away.

"He rocketed almost uncontrollably to the piano, but once there, played a Chopin nocturne with exquisite control and timing and grace--only to festinate once again as soon as the music ended."
--Oliver Sacks, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain

My mom has a dusty old upright player piano in her basement. I took a few piano lessons as a kid and used to practice on it. But I never liked playing the piano. I always preferred to insert a piano roll and let the thing play itself. I still don't quite know how it worked. The piano rolls were (are) long scrolls with little holes in them. In some pneumatic way, they instructed the piano on what notes to play. The rolls all played songs from the pre-war tin-pan alley era. (I think my parents got them at a junk shop or antique show.) One of them was "Melancholy Baby"; I forget what the others were, but they were of that ilk. Now I'm wondering if the piano still works. Maybe I'll try to get the thing going again at Christmastime.