Farewell, Sveta (til August)

I haven't been to a smoky bar in so long, I had forgotten how much my eyeballs hate it. I have chronic dry eyes (Rachel is rolling her eyes right now). It usually only bothers me when I sleep, and especially when I first wake up from sleeping. I use special gel eye drops that are supposed to last longer than regular, but I think its all bunk. It does help, at least. But THIS morning, I woke up with a horrendous case of red eye. I swear to you I could hear my eyes scraping on the back of my eyelids when I opened them. They were THAT dry. Eh, my eyes are bothering me just thinking about it.

Last night, we skipped working out to have dinner with Chris and Shannon at a Vietnamese place near where we live. That food is awesome. They seem to have attempted to update their menu a little since the last time we were there. Instead of serving chips and salsa prior to the meal, like they do at Mexican restaurants, they served rice cakes and some sort of a creamy salsa. As strange as it sounds, it was actually pretty good. The food was great, the service was horrible. We are all convinced our server was stoned. Listen to me! I sound like an old man already.

Anyhoo, after dinner we went straight to the smoky bar where a friend from my work was having a temporarily-going-away party. Sveta is from Russia and is currently here on a work visa. She got accepted to graduate school and now needs a student visa. But in order to do this, she has to go back to her homeland to apply. What?! They are making her fly all the way back to Russia ($2000 plane tickets, by the way) so she can trade out the piece of paper that states she can live here? Crazy. It's all crazy. I'm sure someone, somewhere has a reason for this. But I don't know what it is. Anyways, she has allotted herself two months to apply and receive the visa. Hopefully she gets it in that amount of time, because I don't know what she'll do otherwise. AND I don't know what I'll do for my coffee breaks while she's gone.

Travis came with to the bar and since we were a little early, we played a few rounds of pool while we waited for everyone to arrive. We only stayed until 10:30 because old man Travis was falling asleep on my shoulder. Then came the dried up raisins I like to call my eyeballs. How can I be so sensitive to AIR? Especially considering that I live in the middle of the most polluted area in the country (darn oil refineries)?

On a totally different topic, check out these freakin' ridiculously cute photos that Stephanie took of Wednesday.