It's been a long day

I was awoken several times in the night by a mosquito buzzing near my head. In the past I've responded by turning on the light and pretending to be asleep until I can kill it (they wait for you to settle down), but I was really tired and decided to let it go. Which was a mistake, because when it was time to wake up, I couldn't open my right eye.

This has happened to me in the past and it's not pretty. But this is the first time it happened when I've had to go to work, or worse, a conference attended by some colleagues and some other people I've worked with. I hoped it would open a little by the time I got there, but alas, as I approached a friend of mine at the registration table, she followed her greeting with, "what happened to your eye?" Shortly thereafter, someone else I knew approached to say hello, and looked at me funny. On the bright side, it drew the eye away from the fact that the suit I was wearing no longer fits well. And that's just the way it's going to be, I like food too much. I like dessert too much (and given that today I had two small croissants, a muffin, two tiramisu squares, a cookie, and a small piece of cheesecake, it's a wonder that my clothes fit at all).

After the conference, I had a little bit of time to kill before I had to pick up pecans to sell for the Smith Club of Washington fundraiser. For those of you in the area, don't get too excited yet, the chocolate ones haven't arrived yet, I only have plain. So I went to Banana Republic, of course, but after that, I went to the Russian Gourmet, which I'd heard so much about. From people who aren't Russian. Because as a Russian food store it kind of sucks. Then after hell traffic before and after getting the pecans, I stopped at the Russian Gourmet in Alexandria, which was about as lame. See, people know that DC's Chinatown is lame because they know what not-lame Chinatown looks like, but until you've been to a Russian store in Boston or New York (and I've been to one in San Francisco better than these), the ones in DC would seem acceptable. Anyway, they both have a wide selection of kefir, which is what I primarily need from a Russian food store, and I'll just have to continue to do without the prepared foods sections I was hoping to find. Besides, since I am lovingly barraged with prepared Russian food whenever I visit my parents, I probably don't need to have my own source of it in DC.

Okay, I'm off to hunt down the mosquito in my room.