Apple Bapple

It's finally rainy and cold, which I would be hell of enjoying if not for the fact that I'm still recovering from the worst case of the grippe I've had in quite some time. But more on that in a second.

My friend Squick came down to NYC from Boston on his vacation last Friday and stopped off at work to say hi. We hung out with PT at Bite and had some "drink," which was definitely welcome, given how awful and stressful work has been lately. I'd gotten my hair cut that day by my guy at Astor Hair, Edward, who looks and sounds like a Joe Sacco drawing and gives great haircuts but is utterly unemotive when it comes to pretty much everything. (While I was waiting on Friday, he was cutting the thick, spiky hair of this Asian kid, and he marveled, in a monotone, of course, "Your hair. So much. It like whole other head."

So we were talking about Edward and hair and the cutting of it, and this guy Elo who's a bouncer at Temple Bar came over and started extolling the benefits of shaving with a straight razor. He's kind of a big-shot in the Dominican Republic, he says -- he owns his own pool hall that he won off a guy -- and he's super into collecting razors and shaving paraphernalia. The pride of his collection is one of the razors belonging to the personal barber of Rafael Trujillo. "That guy was like our Hitler," Elo said. (Presumably he didn't mean the barber.) The razor's got this incredible mother-of-pearl handle, and, presumably, some genetic material belonging to the former dictator. "I'm going to restore it," he said. "Wouldn't a museum be interested in those flakes of skin?" I asked. "Nah," he said. "'s worth more if I clean it off." He told me I should Google him to find the forum he posts to in order to get his personal picks for shaving soap and astringents. "I'm like the seventh hit," he said. "He's right," said Squick. "Right after Electric Light Orchestra."

Apple picking got done on Saturday. We usually (well, for the past two years) go to a place called Wright's Farm in Ulster County, NY. That place is great, but it takes a really long time to get to, and we were kind of ready for a change. So this year we went to Riamede Farms, which is in New Jersey, and is just as nice, apple-wise, although they don't have a cool little cafe the way Wright's did, nor do they have dilly beans. Ted (driving) and Tom and 'Leen and Greg (down from MIT) came this time -- Katharine was in the middle of a hellish close at the 'xim, Emma's under the gun on her book, and Nina had midterms to cram for. And Katie just kind of inexplicably bowed out at the last moment. Still, we managed to have a great time -- the evidence is in my photostream. The apples were all huge and strangely luminous, and we ate and picked a ton. I got not one but two grasshoppers put down my shirt (though I may have squealed and cringed about twice as much as last year), and Ted gave himself a pretty deep cut by trying to yank a tough, fibrous weed out of the ground in the pumpkin patch. I don't know what I'm going to do with all my apples. A pie, prolly?

We convened at 680 afterwards to mull some cider and enjoy the material fruits of our fruit-labor -- and the previously absent ladies did show up for this -- but everybody was so exhausted that it wasn't really much of a shindig. Colleen called from her place a few minutes in and asked Tom if he could help her dispose of a rat she and her roommates had nabbed in a glue trap. Tom, not particularly relishing the idea of the actual, uh, disposal, asked if I wanted to help, and I'm all, you know, sure. So we head over there and the thing is kind of writing around in the trap grotesquely, stuck by it's legs, but also sort of keeled over and gummed up on its side. It can't really move much at all -- not a case for extraction, certainly. And it's definitely a rat (I'm a little skeptical of Nina's theory that there are no mice in New York, only baby Norwegian Browns); the shape of its head and back are pretty telltale. So Tom puts the thing in a plastic bag, and we head down to the street, wearing work gloves and filled with terrible purpose. I grab one of those big cobblestone things they use to line the planters the city plants trees in, and I just kind of bash the bag a whole bunch. That's not really a problem for me -- I'm a firm believer in putting things out of their misery -- but in mid-bash, a bunch of dirt flies off the cobblestone and gets in my mouth! And I'm all ack, pbthhh.

As the evening starts to wind down, I start feeling kind of unwell -- throat's all scratchy, nose is running -- and of course I think, oh god, I got plague from the rat bits! But not really. I got plague from Nina or Eve or any one of the dozen people who were sick last week. And what a plague it was! I felt like a dude in a NyQuil commercial (given to describing my suffering in florid similes) for like 3 days straight. I stayed home from work, playing Final Fantasy and creating a small mountain of Kleenexes, which I think freaked Randy out a little. And I've still got a sinus infection, which is turning my nostrils into taps for thick, yellow, acrid custard. Cheers!