No. No. No.
House hunting is one of my least favorite things ever. I kind of like moving into a new place, of getting everything settled and learning the way the light moves through the windows at dawn, or how the eaves shake in the wind. I don’t necessarily want to become familiar with the way the carpet squishes in the toilet dungeon – oh I’m sorry, I mean third bedroom with en suite.
We’ll keep looking. MEANWHILE! My mom had a birthday. An important one, but I guess they all are.
There’s no real explanation, but she wasn’t really feeling her birthday this year. The winter storm we just experienced was costly for her, having had to hire a professional to come clear her driveway so my stepdad could attempt to get to work and help my grandpa get a massive tree cut up and hauled from his driveway. I really wish we could have surprised her with an Alaskan cruise or a room full of pug puppies, but sometimes it just doesn’t happen that way. So what’s a family to do? Eat at La Tarasca, for starters. And then Harbor City dim sum for seconders.
And for dessert we tried Olympia’s new Jewish deli, Kitzel’s, which is a source of great drama for generally Jew-free Olympia. Not the Jewish part, the skimpy-but-expensive-portions part.
My salted herring plate was $9 and actually too much food for me to eat. Well, specifically too much salt. Which is unusual. I need salt like most people need water. But the herring is magnificently, astonishingly salty, which is why there’s a heap of underseasoned potato salad and two pickled tomatoes on the plate.
My mom and The Viking shared a pastrami sandwich, which at another $10 wasn’t exactly a deal, but was enough food for them to share as a modest lunch.
I do have to call total and utter bullshit on them for charging $1.50 for a bagel (okay, I’ll let it slide) but $3.50 for a bagel with cream cheese. TWO DOLLARS FOR CREAM CHEESE. And! Just when I sort of calmed down about that, I noticed that a bagel with butter was $2.75! A dollar fucking twenty five for a pat of butter! Oh ho, oh man. That. That is… ballsy. And insulting. The show-down at Yelp gives a good idea of the dramz, but the one thing that really irked me has been taken down: Kitzel’s gave themselves a five star review and then sassed back to every bad reviewer about how their prices and servings were the same¹ as elsewhere in town.
I like the sass, but I’d like it backed up with some substance. And by substance, I mean that I’d like to not spend four dollars on a bagel and a schmear.
¹ They are actually more expensive, but who cares, facts are for meshuggeners.
