At the Antiques Roadshow

Miami Beach was electric with excitement this past weekend because something we had all been looking forward to had finally arrived. No, not that swollen headed, man-child, Lebron James. The Antiques Roadshow was here, and Mark and I were going. Earlier this year we had scored the coveted tickets on line, and for months Mark and I have been debating about which pieces of crap would be schlepped on down to Miami Beach. As of the morning of the show we had still not decided exactly what to take. In fact, the morning of the show Mark and I were sleeping in late after a Friday night of drinking. It was one hour before the designated time on the ticket when Mark piped up, "Aren't we supposed to go to the Antiques Roadshow today?" I immediately jumped out of bed, let the dog out, took a shower, and then ran around the house plucking some old paintings off the wall.
"We're taking these."
"Fine" said Mark, "I'm taking this old lunch box."

After an agonizingly slow ride down to Miami Beach with Mark at the wheel, we managed to get to the convention center where the nice man at the door informed us that we were late, and then pointed us towards 'the line'. Now the fact that we needed a ticket to get in sort of sent the message to me that this would be a somewhat restricted event. Turns out it was restricted to only six thousand participants, of which I was number six thousand. After getting in line and making acquaintances with the folks around me, I settled into a routine of shuffling my treasures along two feet every few minutes as we slowly snaked our way towards the main room and the Keno brothers. Two hours later we were ushered through the doors, and shown the end of another line. "The wait time for painting appraisals is between two and three hours." the nice lady informed me. Turning to Mark, she said "Sir, you can go get your Rocket Man lunch box appraised over in that line. It only has a fifteen minute wait."

Thirty minutes later a smiling Mark came skipping back to my stationary spot in line, with a big smile on his face.
"This is great! Dennis gave this lunch box to me for free, and it's worth a hundred and fifty dollars!"
"That's nice.", I sneered.

At this point all the schlepping and jostling apparently was causing my antique paintings to start falling apart. As bits and pieces of antique backing paper crumbled to the floor, and glass started slipping from the disjointed frame, I hit my limit.
"Screw this. These things can't be worth that much, and my damn feet are killing me. Let's go."
Without missing a beat Mark's face lit up "Great, can we go shopping over on Lincoln Road now?"