Antiques; understanding "at a single glance".

Drove west to Hellertown, Pennsylvannia, yesterday to buy a set of wool-stuffed pillows to complete our organic bedroom set. It sounds crazy, I know. But this sort of thing will start to become more popular once people realize how much toxic gas they're inhaling at night just from sleeping on a conventional mattress and pillow set. This goes double for people with asthma. On the way home, we took a detour along the Delaware River to visit an antique shop that we were told about by the owner of the organic bedding store, where I bought a darling vintage clutch purse in sky blue Persian lamb. It was in near-mint condition, with just a little bit of tarnish on the metal clasps and fittings, and definitely worth my $10. Clearly, the owner had never used it because the cardboard protector was still inside the billfold compartment, and one of the front slots carried a leaflet for emergency information, like name, social security number and other data the police nowadays teach you never to leave lying around, which was still blank.

It was easy for me to shell out ten bucks for a purse, because the only criteria it needed to fulfill was that it be cute. But buying antique furniture, though, is another matter.

"The prices are real weird," Hooman mumbles to me under his breath, as we were looking at a wooden side table, with drawer, that was selling for $150. It looked nice enough, but the problem was we didn't know what it was. Being inexperienced, it's difficult for us to determine the provenance (and thus value) of things we're looking at unless we've researched the item in-depth the night before (which, yesterday, we didn't). And when something is priced at $150, which is relatively cheap, it raises questions in our inexperienced minds, because there's a sense that valuable things tend not to be priced so low. In cases like that, we may as well go to Ikea and buy a build-your-own $150 side table that's brand new, if that's what we really wanted.

Anyway, this is turning out to be a nice summer for Hooman and I, because we've had a chance to indulge in our many joint hobbies, including learning about period furniture and how to judge their monetary value. I think what the two of us love the most in life is learning new skills to help hone our judgment, and our hobbies reflect this -- antiquing, sailing, golfing, cooking. I think for Hooman it comes from his tenacious desire to survive; for me, it comes from a ridiculous fantasy that I'll be able to understand the world at a single glance.