Look what I just got in the mail:
“Congratulations! You have been selected to receive two tickets to the ANTIQUES ROADSHOW event in Madison, WI, on Saturday, July 11, 2009 at the Alliant Energy Center.”
Whoo!
Yes, Neal and I ARE nerds, thank you very much. (Well, I’d say I’m about 1/2 geek and 1/2 nerd, while he’s 1/4 nerd and 3/4 geek.)
We’re also pretty darn excited because this is very near his paternal grandmother, which means we’ll get to see her again! We haven’t seen her in quite a while and have been trying to figure out how to get out there to see her, but this makes the decision easy. We can definitely take time to do both and give ourselves some extra time to spend with Grandma.
Yay!
Holy cow! You are so lucky; I’d LOVE to go to that show! I’d have a hard time picking out something to take, though; I really don’t think there’s a “valuable” thing in this entire house. Are you taking anything to be appraised?
We debated it last year when they were in Minneapolis, but couldn’t do it around other expenses. We can take up to two things per person, and we have three things in mind so far. Neal’s grandfather brought a Japanese sword back from WWII, and a teacher I work with (who is a sword collector and expert and has been on the History Channel for his work, apparently) had previously appraised it at around $800, but we want more info on it than Dr. Buck had time to give us. We also received a lithograph from my in-laws when we were married, so we thought we’d take that just to learn more about what it actually is (even if it’s not worth anything, knowing its history would be fun). Neal has an old metronome that his maternal grandmother passed on to him that we’d like to learn more about as well. I can’t think of anything else that we can get our hands on in time for the fourth thing.
We’re not expecting things to be worth tons, but we’d just like to know more about them, I guess. I wish I could get my hands on a couple things that I know my family or Neal’s family has, but some are too large and others are too far away.
I really wish we could take this table that my in-law are holding for us (that’s been in their family for a few generations and might be from Sweden), mainly in hopes that I could meet one of the Kenos. 
I am extremely jealous of y’all. I really want to take my parents to this. I hope that sword ends up being worth big money.
It’s technically my father-in-law’s sword, but it’d be nice to know any more about it in the way of family history. I am so glad to hear someone else near our age say this, because I keep getting odd looks at work when I talk about how excited I am to go.