From Russia with love! Or maybe Korea!!

In this installment we will cover:

-Updates about the refi and the job ap
-The surprise trip on Saturday
-The Visiting ‘O’ the Grandmas on Sunday

We had the finale of the whirl-wind refi of our mortgage on Friday, when Jeffrey, a local Notary Public, came to visit us and witness our signing of all the paperwork, and I mean an inch-high stack of paperwork. Fortunately he was a really nice guy, about our age, and we all talked about some interesting things.

Jeffrey, it seems, had a friend in Taneytown who was married to a small person (he called her a dwarf), and they had two kids (also small people). Apparently, they were really, ah, rednecks. Anyway, this guy called Jeffrey at 2 in the morning one night. He was in tears, he said he’d just seen his wife coming out of another guy’s house. And Jeffrey, who was still half asleep, said…

Wait for it….

“Are you sure it was her?”

To which the man yelled: “How many #$^!& dwarves do you know in Taneytown?!?!?”

So that’s done. I also finally got the application materials done and emailed in to FEMA last night, and I received a receipt notice this morning. I’m not thrilled about the job, I think I’m overqualified, but that’s the way it works around here: I’m overqualified for the support positions, but I’m not qualified for the training and administration positions. If I want to get a fed job, I need to get my foot in there somewhere. Tom of the Dancing Pecs told me that once they find out I can chew gum and walk at the same time, they start giving more job duties, and then you start getting more qualified for higher positions.

On to Saturday: Matt told me a week ago that we had a date on Saturday, and it was a surprise. So Saturday comes, we hop in the car and he drives us down to Frederick….through Frederick….down 270….where the hell are we going….Finally it dawned on me: we were going to the new Russian market he found down in Germantown. And yes, that’s where we were going. He was upset that I’d guessed. It is called the Russian Gourmet a small shop but with LOTS of stuff.

They have a couple freezers and coolers with drinks, cheeses, and frozen peirogi and raviolis available. Shelves and shelves of jams, canned pickled mushrooms and other things, bottles of beet juice, loads of chocolates, tins of different pates and smoked fish in oil. Teas. Coffees. Those really good, heavy, dense eastern European breads. And a deli with meats and cheeses (mostly) from eastern Europe and the Russian states.

When we got there it was busy, but soon we were the only people there. Matt started asking about some of the meats in the case, and the next thing you know they’re giving us samples of every meat and cheese we asked about. And chocolates, too, samples of those. Very nice stuff. Great people. They also had magazines in Russian and CDs.

Almost all the labels were entirely in Russian. We had no idea what some things where and relied on pictures on the packaging to help us. For example, they had several bottles of sodas in the cooler. Some of them had pictures of pears or oranges on them, and we could figure that out. But one of them had a picture of two bells on it, and another had a picture of a nice woodland scene with a lake. Pond scum soda? So we asked, and the woman said “Oh, that is soda.” And we asked if it tasted like bells, and she laughed. The Bell Soda was a clear soda, sweet with no real flavor. The Woodland soda was herbal, and we bought a bottle of that.

We also got several tins of smoked herring and such (Matt loves these), some tins of shrimp pate, a few loaves of bread, some candy, some sliced meats and cheeses, some lamb ravioli for Grandma Helen, some pierogi for Matt’s parents, tea for my mom. It was a very nice place, and we will definitely go back.

Two doors down from the Russian place was an Asian and International market called Lotte’s. It is a regular sized grocery store, big for an international market. We went in there next. All the signs here were in some Asian script and English, so that made us feel better, but the labeling was again predominantly in an Asian language and had little English, so if it wasn’t obvious from the packaging what was in it we really didn’t know.

It was very interesting to me to see the differences between this market and your average American market. The produce section was larger and had some different things: maybe 4 varieties of eggplant, 7 varieties of bok choy. They had some fruits that you don’t see in other markets. The seafood section was huge with tanks of living, swimming fish and live crabs and things. I’ve never seen a seafood section that big, it was probably as big as the inside of your average McDonalds, including the bathrooms and cooking area. Big. The meat counter was tiny. They had more varieties of tofu than I have ever seen before. And they had quail eggs available for purchase.

We found a display of pumelos in the produce section. They were the size of small bowling balls. The ones they have at Giant are usually the size of large grapefruits. The only other Caucasian couple in the store quickly ran over to us and said “What is it?!? Have you had them?!? How do you eat it?!?” It was really funny. We said we thought it was like a grapefruit and we’d never seen any this big before. They seemed disappointed that we couldn’t help them.

Lots and lots of canned oriental veggies like bamboo shoots and such. An entire half aisle devoted to dried kelp and seaweed. An aisle of ramen noodle-type packages with more variety than I thought possible. They had an ‘American’ aisle, and a ‘Mexican’ aisle. About 15 types of electric rice cookers. An excellent variety of spices and seasonings.

We didn’t get any veggies or seafood. We got a pound of freeze dried shitake mushrooms at a really good price, some frozen pork lumpia, a bag of star anise (89 cents! The pound bag was $2.99) and some galangal. Matt picked out some shrimp crisps (which sound awful but are pretty good). I got some rice cake-like sticks that were REALLY good and we need to get some more. We picked up two bottles of non-alcoholic Sangria from the Mexican section.

And as we were walking through the soft drink aisle, I looked over and said, in loud shock: “My god, they have Pocari Sweat!!”, which is a Japanese non-carbonated drink that has many positive ions. Dave Barry wrote about it in his Dave Barry Does Japan book, and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to buy a bottle. It is sweet and flavored with grapefruit, but it is also a little salty, just barely, which reminds you very much of….sweat….when you drink it. It was ok. I wouldn’t go out of my way for it, but I’m glad I had a chance to try it.

All in all, we had a great shopping trip. We’re definitely going back to both places, to try some different things.

Sunday was Visiting the Grandmothers day. We first went to visit G. Helen and give her the lamb ravioli. She loved them. We sat and talked with her for a while. Then we went over to visit G. Mary V. I had some work to do there, she needed some of her necklace clasps converted to magnetic clasps, so I did that. I also got a pendant on a chain that needed some finagling to get it on. She was very happy and fed us really good tuna casserole and salads, then an apple tart. She’s an excellent cook. She is almost totally deaf now, and is going in for a cochlear implant surgery at the end of the month. I really hope all goes well, I’d love for her to be able to hear again.

Busy. I’ve been tired lately, but fortunately the refi is done and the job ap is done, and now I can focus on some other things that need done.