Hamfest and Asian...

Today was the Memorial Day Hamfest at the Howard County Fairgrounds. It's one of the few holidays I spend in Baltimore instead of going up to visit the family in NJ, so I can sell at this fest.

It was... OK. There were quite a few vendors, although none selling stuff I wanted (my only purchase was a $5 Linksys range extender). There weren't so many customers, though. I ended up grossing $357 - not awful, but not great either. I had a number of Dell systems, from P4 1.6 up to core 2 duo 2.13, and did not sell a single one. Usually I blow them out pretty quickly, but they were hardly looked at - and from talking to one of the other vendors, his experiences were similar. I don't know if it's because it's a holiday weekend or the economy or what, but while I'm glad to have some money and slightly less crap, I'm disappointing to not have even more money and even less crap.

I may sell at the Manassas VA fest in two weeks - I've never been to it, but since several of the other fests I've sold at in the past are gone (Fredrick, Gaithersberg) I figure I need to branch out. I'd also like to free up some space in my basement, and make some more cash - I'm in the process of trying to refinance my house, and if it goes through it will eat up most of my savings, so I need to start rebuilding them.

The other less than pleasant thing about the fest is that while I was glad it didn't rain, it was very sunny. I'm now bright red in various places on my body - evidently my skin can only be either clammy pale white or lobster red. I should have worn sunscreen.

After the 'fest, I headed off to Lotte to do some grocery shopping. Lotte is an Asian grocery store, plus food court and department store and some other stuff, all crammed into an old supermarket space in a strip mall. Shopping there is an experience - the parking lot is like driving in a demolition derby full of Asians in late-model Camry's, the isles are tiny and arranged in no particular order (it's not unusual to see the same product in a different brand in a completely different isle), they have things like live turtles, most of the packages are in Korean, occasionally with some Engrish, and you can buy things like hot bean paste in tubs the size you normally associate with industrial chemicals.





I bought mostly staple stuff - sauces, sesame oil, spices, apples - but also a few new things to try - mixed grains (which I suspect will not come out well in my rice cooker), some sort of diet Aloe drink, a "Hawaiian Banana", and some Azuki red bean ice cream, which I suspect I bought mostly because it's one of the ingredients that's always mentioned on Iron Chef. Haven't tried anything yet, so no reviews yet.