Piercing, picking (fruit) & partying

Saturday, October 12th.

Our plan for Saturday afternoon was to go on an excursion to an apple orchard together with Susan and some of her friends. Before we did that, though, there was something entirely different that we wanted to do...

Last night when we sat around Susan's apartment and talked she mentioned something about how she was considering getting another ear piercing to go with the ones she has already. We told her that we'd both thought about getting our eyebrows pierced at some point. "Alright," she said, "let's go do that tomorrow". And so we did. First we went to a fairly respectable store thinking that we would play it safe and be sure that everything was sanitary etc. They were all booked up for most of the afternoon, though, which didn't go well with our plans. So instead we went to a Tattoo place down the street where we could get it done right away. As we entered a big bald guy was eating his lunch behind the counter. He had a generous amount of tattoos and piercings across his body and, not surprisingly, was the guy that would be doing the honors of piercing our eyebrows. He set aside his hamburger and fries and said that he'd go clean up so he could do it all in a sanitary fashion. Fair enough, we thought.

The procedure itself was fairly painless and didn't take more than a few minutes. And we figured that a chance to annoy both family, friends and girlfriends for only $20 was a pretty cheap pleasure... :)

So equipped with two new shiny body appendages we headed for the Curtis Orchard together with Susan, her roommate Lisa and Susan's friends John, Sally and Kevin. We walked the rows of apple trees eating a few apples here and there and bagging the rest to take home. Kevin and John had planned to climb the trees hunting for apples but unfortunately the trees were so small that all the apples could be reached easily. The orchard came complete with a large playground for the kids, a live band playing country music and a well equipped store that was staffed by really laid-back people who were intent on seeing just how long they could make people wait in line before their heads started to pop... :) We all made it out of there fine, though, and among other things we now have a minature pumpkin on the dashboard of our van -- even a van can use a little Halloween decorating, we thought.

After that we drove out to retrieve our van from the parking lot where we'd left it overnight. And apparently we got there just in time to avoid a ticket; the van had a little "car check" note stuck under the windshield wiper, as if someone was planning to come back and ticket it soon. So we hurried on out of there (after letting the van warm up for a minute or two so it wouldn't quit on us in mid-traffic, that is).

The weather had been really nice during the day so the plan was to have a barbeque dinner. Although it got pretty chilly and started to rain later on we stuck with that same plan. So we went over to the guys' apartment that evening and let Kevin work the grill out on the balcony while we experimented with the Apple Cake mix that Susan had picked up at the orchard. We ended up with a heavy-set spice cake with chunks of apple in it, baked in a casserole in the oven since the guys didn't own a cake pan. But it was actually quite good and went exceptionally well with cheeseburgers and beer... :)

As the evening progressed we realized that American drinking games are remarkably similar to the ones played in Denmark -- and equally effective... :) Susan's friends were lots of fun, and due to the nature of the games we played we learned some very interesting and amusing anecdotes about them. Around midnight the party was relocated to a bar downtown for an hour or so after which we went over to Susan's apartment for a while. On the way over there we pulled the couch out of the van and got everyone to pile on it for a group picture. As we were taking the picture some other random people came by and also decided to get in a picture with us.

Back in Susan's apartment we all sat down to watch an episode of The Simpson's after which most people scattered, Jens crashed on the couch and Dan and Susan made a run across the street to get nachos and then also crashed for the night.