Updates!

Busy, busy! We’ve had a lot to do this summer, and I’m still working through the summer as well. In addition, we’re FINALLY moving from the pit-of-hell apartment (okay, it’s not a drug den — that I know of — but the management and quite a few other renters still suck for a variety of reasons). Our new apartment is closer to where I work (as in walk/bike to work close), we have a garage, a storage area, and a bigger apartment in general with a balcony to sit out on. There are tons of other perks, but those are the biggies for us (in addition to actually good managerial staff).

Antiques Roadshow went extremely well. I’ve never been in such a humongous yet well-organized event before. We found out that the lithograph we took (in addition to two smaller things) is indeed real and from the 1890s. We were super excited to hear that, obviously, since it’s such a wonderful lithograph and we LOVE it. Nicholas Lowry appraised it for us, as we had hoped during our time in the queue. We’d seen him on the show before, and we knew he’d be fun to talk to. He gave us a hard time for appraising a wedding gift (insurance purposes! We have a rider on our insurance, and we wanted to be sure the lithograph was actually real before continuing to pay that) and also quite a scare.

NL: Tell me about this.

Us: blah blah wedding gift

NL: *raises eyebrows and strokes his chin* You’re appraising a wedding gift?

Us: *babbling* Yes, we wanted to know more about the artist. Also, insurance purposes!

NL: *laughs and then sobers up* It looks really new.

Us: Uh. *can’t think of anything to say* We just wanted to know more about it.

NL: Good news, though. It’s not! It’s a well-known lithographer, although this is not his most famous piece, which is …. Yours is from the 1890s…

[just writing the important stuff here]

Us: Yay!

And so on.

We also took Neal’s grandfather’s (whom Neal has never known, as he died tragically when Neal’s dad was a child) Japanese katana from WWII and a metronome of Neal’s that he received from his grandmother when he was learning how to play the violin. The metronone is from the 1920s, which was exciting to know, and was made in Paris, France.

Anyway, good stuff. The producers and staff of AR are amazingly friendly and helpful. We saw one producer come over give his headphones to the girl behind us in line, so she could listen in on the appraiser and guest about the guitar they were then filming. Her boyfriend collects guitars, and she had been trying to get closer, but was told to get back. She asked a volunteer about it, but he couldn’t hear either, so he asked a producer who handed over the headphones (a Martin worth $5000 that was kept in a basement closet). The volunteer also gave us some info on other things around the place, such as a huge Japanese-made table that was worth $25,000 to $30,000 and the even bigger wardrobe that the owner thought was from the 1800s — but it was actually a fake.

We entered and exited almost exactly three hours apart, and this included standing in a huge line (that kept moving pretty quickly; I don’t think I stood in one place for more than five minutes the entire time), getting the general appraisal information (where we needed to go to have our items actually appraised), finding the first two lines (arms, to talk to this guy, and music, to talk to this guy, which were luckily both short lines), standing for a bit in the prints line for the lithograph, walking around to check out the scene (and look for the Kenos, whom we did not see), and then give our couple bucks at the Feedback Booth (the girls in front of us will probably be on television: They had prepared a song!) All in all, a wonderful time, and I would recommend it to anyone!

In other news, our saga with Qwest continues. We are STILL getting billed for our old service (yes, folks, we have actually passed the year mark as of a month ago) and we just found out we can’t get the same level of service at the new place. I’ve luckily found Qwest’s twitter (no, I don’t have a twitter account, but they have an email and will help you if you email them), which has been more helpful than my “executive customer service” representative from the BBB case. If you need to contact them, I suggest emailing the address on their twitter (or @talktoqwest on twitter) and talking to Steph. She’s been helping us with both the move (and she got us a GREAT price on the service, which was much less than we have been quoted by several other people, which made me happy, since it’s a slower speed than we currently have at this apartment) and with trying to figure out the continual billing at our old address. So far, no one has been able to actually stop the statements, but I’m hoping Steph can get behind the issue.

Our big move date (i.e., moving the furniture, since we’ll have all the smaller stuff over there already) is this Saturday. I’m looking forward to the peace and quiet of our new home! Picnics and grilling out! Riding my bike! (We can’t have bikes at this current apartment at all, even outside, and we aren’t allowed to use any grills anywhere on the premises. Work is going well for me, and Neal has the summer off (forcibly, since he didn’t get a contract for the summer, but I think it’s been good for him to have a break). His contract for next year is only for the first semester so far, at 75%, but I’m hoping he’ll get picked up for the spring semester, too. We’re keeping that in our prayers, along with a few other personal things, but otherwise life is pretty good today.

(We’ll see what happens tomorrow, now that I’ve actually written that out.)