Daniel's 21st

Last night we celebrated Daniel's birthday and it was a blast! Around 8:30 some of his fraternity brothers came over to our house. Some of them just got back from abroad so we haven't seen them since the summer. It was so great to see our friends again. We went to the liquor store earlier in the day so we had a fully stocked bar. We started off with mojitos and within an hour or two the guys were taking shots called slippery nipples. Daniel really likes Baileys so he had a lot of drinks with that in it. He took a shot where he wasn't allowed to use his hands, so he had to pick up the shot glass in his mouth and lean way back to swallow it. I don't know who comes up with this stuff! We sang happy birthday and had cake and ice cream- the cake was delicious! Everyone but one guy was over 21, but we wanted that one guy to be able to go out with us. So we went to the same place we went for my 21st birthday called the Cherry Cricket. Most of the guys took a cab and the rest of us rode with the designated driver. I stayed behind a few minutes and rode with the DD. When we got there, everyone was in the parking lot. Daniel showed the bouncer his ID, and he wouldn't let them in! Even though it was already his birthday and he was already officially 21, they wouldn't let anyone in. He said it looked like they had been drinking already. They had been drinking, but not so much that they were all drunk and disorderly. They all were standing there completely silent waiting to go in. So it was kind of strange and ridiculous. We walked down the street and found a place called miniBAR. We went in and it had a very cool atmosphere so we sat down. After we ordered drinks, and they gave Daniel a free drink, we started to look around and realized that there were A LOT of gay guys there. Daniel went to the bathroom and when he came back he said a guy hit on him very obviously. I asked our waitress and she said that it wasn't a gay bar per se, but a lot of gay guys hang out there. While we finished our drinks, some of the guys went outside to see if they could find another bar. We ended up right across the street at a place called Earls. Our waitress was really nice and she told her other tables that it was Daniel's birthday so they all wished him Happy Birthday. By this point we were all into our 3rd and 4th drinks, so we had a great time. Nobody got too drunk, and everybody had a fabulous time. We took a cab home and called it a night about 1am. I think it was just perfect- we had some drinks and had a good time, but nobody got completely wasted and we were all still responsible about it. The best part was being able to see some of our friends that have been abroad the past 4 months.

When we got home and got ready for bed, I felt like there was something in my eye. I kept blinking and rubbing trying to get it out, but it wouldn't come out. I figured if I went to sleep that it would come out in the middle of the night and I would be fine in the morning. Well, I wasn't fine in the morning. It was so irritating I couldn't sleep all night. It felt like a grain of sand in my eye! I tried putting contact solution in, but that didn't help so I made an appointment with the health center on campus. The doctor that saw me was so nice. He listened carefully to what I said and examined my eye. He put some dye in it and then held up some kind of UV light, but he said he couldn't see anything in there. He thought it was probably a small abrasion on my eye itself that would heal on its own. He referred me to an ophthalmologist near campus, but they couldn't see me until tomorrow. The ophthalmologist told me to get some artificial tears and use them once every hour until my appointment tomorrow morning. I don't do very well with eye drops. Even though I wear contacts and I can touch my eye, there's something about drops that make me very uncomfortable. I have to lay on the couch and hold my eye open while Daniel squirts the drops in. He got mad at me because I kept closing my eye and he couldn't get the drops in. But anyways, it helped a lot. I took a nap this afternoon and when I woke up around 4pm my eye felt so much better. When I cooked dinner, I cut up an onion and that really irritated it again. But now it's feeling back to normal so I'm going to cancel my appointment tomorrow. It was the weirdest thing; that's never happened to me before. But I'm so glad it's better. My biggest fear is that it wouldn't go away and I had to spend my entire vacation in Vegas with a grain of sand in my eye.

Tomorrow we clean and pack, and then on Friday morning we're leaving again! I'm so excited!!