My birthday, in a word, was fan-f’ing-tastic. It was nothing too terribly exciting, no huge surprise party or sky-diving, or Ducati to show up in my front yard. BUT, a friend made me an amazing dinner that must have taken the better part of a week to put together… and the thoughtfulness of that act alone made my birthday a very good one.

Also, and I say this without exaggeration, it was quite possibly the best meal I’ve ever had in my life. Sorry mom. I’ve travelled a fair bit, I’ve been to Europe, I’ve been to Asia, I’ve been all over the U.S., to the real Mexico and Canada, and I have never had anything so good.

It was one of those instances where I knew someone was cooking for me. So, on my way home, I’m talking to myself, “OK John (I call myself John for some reason [no, not really]), no matter what it tastes like, you eat everything. Every. Thing. And you say, ‘Wow! This is the best thing I’ve ever tasted!’, even if you don’t really mean it. Be gracious.” This was my mindset. But then I get home, and there are candles, there are flowers, there are actual grown-up placemats, and beautiful dishes, and food that looked as good as it tasted… and I didn’t have to just say something to be polite, it really was that good.

And, to the best of my knowledge, no one has really cooked like that for me before. ADG of course made dinner from time to time, as did L, and any number of other past relationships and friends, but this was… it was just incredible, OK? And the amount of work that went into even just the presentation was very humbling… obviously, as I’m still talking about it 3 days later.

And my parents got me a shirt which was actually in line with my style.

And Southwest Airlines sent me a card, so that’s cool.