Over 200 people said happy birthday to me, dopamine rush

3:08 AM (of Tuesday, September 19th 2023)

Today is Monday, September 18th 2023, the day after my birthday. Since I haven't written about it yet, let me go over my birthday, September 17th 2023.

My birthday was pretty cool. I went to sleep at like 4 AM the night before, hours after I wrote my post of reflecting on my 20s. I woke up at maybe 8 or 9 AM, of course I was still tired after barely getting any sleep. I think my mom wished me happy birthday and gave me a card. It had some birthday words congratulating me on reaching my 30s and both of my parent's signatures. Pretty cool.

Most of the morning of my birthday, I don't even remember what I did. Maybe I just kept on watching Hitman Reborn? I think I was on Twitter a lot too? There were some people starting to post Happy Birthday on my facebook wall. I replied to one person's last night. I was too scared to open up my Facebook and check them out. No one on Twitter knew it was my birthday either, and I had around 1084 followers or something, maybe 1078 followers, during this time, I mention this because it becomes a lot more later. Not much happened in the morning that I can remember.

Actually, I do remember now. I cleaned up my room a bit, and I sent Emma some photos of some new keyboards that arrived. She wished me happy birthday and sent me some other messages and some photos. She's really cool to talk to.

At around 1:30 PM or maybe 2 PM, we went out to Terrestre Cocina Compasion, which is a vegan sushi restaurant. They used to just have a stall open in Old San Juan on Saturday's, they still have that, but they also expanded to opening their own restaurant here. The food there is amazing, I attached photos of it. The place was really packed when we went there, we basically took the last open table. Other people came in after us and they had nowhere to sit. Lots of people kept coming in and out the whole time, my mom made a lot of comments about how there were a lot of people and how big the vegan community here must be.

We got our food and took some pictures. The meal was fantastic as always. My favorite sushi there is the Flower Power. It's really the best. The Rainbow Roll is also good.

I took a photo using Wahl's chopsticks that she gifted me for my birthday last year. I still like her a lot, and I think about her a lot, I write about her a lot. Her happy birthday greeting was the one I was looking most forward to today, to be honest, but I wasn't sure she was going to be sending anything. We haven't talked since I last mentioned her messaging me, which was a few weeks, maybe a month ago. So even though I was looking to her message the most, I wasn't sure if she was going to be sending anything.

After that we went to Best Buy and did some window shopping, and then we went home. I don't remember what I did at home, I think I was on Twitter again, maybe watching some Hitman Reborn, maybe responding to people on Facebook. My parents prepared a cake for me using vegan only ingredients, basically we bought cake mix and then instead of using eggs, we used 1/2 a banana per egg as a substitute. The result is actually far better taste, fewer calories and fat, no cholesterol. That's how easy it is to bake a vegan cake over a traditional one. This cake was really good.

The candles we bought for it happened to be really low quality though, and they melted basically instantly. Like the candles didn't last 10 seconds each, they started melting right away and we had to cut a small part of the top of the cake out because the wax melted all over it. Still my parents took pictures and recorded a video of me blowing out the candles. Woohoo, 30 years old. I'm no longer in my 20s.

After thanking a few more people that posted happy birthday on my Facebook, I posted the photo of me with the birthday cake and the food at Terrestre Compasion, then logged out. Lia sent me a happy birthday today shortly after. I think maybe because she saw this post on facebook? Although of course I wanted Wahl to send me a happy birthday the most, I also wanted one from Lia. She's someone I could still potentially ask out I think. So yeah, and she did. Thank you. She also posted it in the Vegpal chat and a few other people there celebrated my birthday as well. I still haven't opened up her text message or listened to the voice message she sent yet, even as of now.

Then I hung out with my parents for a bit. My mom kept talking about the ECG function on the Apple Watch the whole day and really wanted to try it. So I was showing how to use this feature to my dad, because my mom was in the bathroom or something at the time. That's when Wahl messaged me. She still appears on my phone as Girlfriend, as that's the name. I gave her. She knows that too because I accidentally sent her a screenshot that had Girlfriend in there as her name. Anyway I quickly swiped the message out, because my dad was looking at the watch too, I didn't want him to see what she sent, whatever it was. I didn't see it either.

Shortly after my mom tried the ECG. Then I hung out with my parents for a bit longer. Like an hour later, I got on my phone and I read the preview text message of what Wahl sent. It was a really long one, the longest happy birthday I've received that day, and it had a lot of compliments and well wishes. Thank you. I'd spend like the whole night and next day in the back of my mind, thinking of how I'd reply to that, while asking her out again.

On Twitter, I made a post just like the one on Facebook, except just one photo. I just posted a teeny message like "I'm officially in my 30s today. Vegan birthday cake btw" and this photo of me. I don't know how it went viral, but it did. This post of me on Twitter had over 6k views when I woke up the morning the next day, and like over 300 likes, and over 40 comments saying happy birthday. I had a lot of likes and comments on the Facebook version too, which was only shared among my friends.

Actually before posting this photo, I messaged Emma a few times, sending her some of these photos so she could evaluate them and tell me if they're good or not. She said I was good looking and hot in every photo I sent her. That's such an ego boost. Thank you. I feel the opposite of hot all the time.

Anyway, I felt confident in posting this photo of me, so that's why I did that on Facebook and Twitter. These posts would get so many comments and views throughout the day. I'd check every like.5 hours or something. The last time I checked which was like 8 hours ago from when I'm typing this, it had around 12k views and over 100 happy birthday comments, and over 650 likes. Like that is insane right? That's so many. The post just went viral for some reason and a lot of people wished me happy birthday. I also gained like 30-40 followers, because I have around 1116 followers now last time I checked, from 1080 or so the night before.

So my parents and I basically stayed at home the whole day today. I woke up at 8 AM, and my parents said that was too late and it was too sunny now to go out and walk in the park. I had planned to walk there at 6 AM, but I wasn't awake during that time. So I walked on the treadmill instead. At home I was just watching Hitman Reborn the whole day basically. I was so tired because I barely got any sleep. I barely did any work today either. No homework either, even though I have both work and homework due, I didn't work on any of those. I ate a lot too.

Later at like 7 PM, my parents and I would go to the mall, and we'd walk around. Before going to the mall, I replied to Wahl with some messages and asked her out again. I replied to her Happy Birthday first, and then a few seconds later, she enabled the "Do Not Disturb" thing. Like I sent her that message, started drafting the next one, and saw the "Has notifications disabled" message pop up in real time. It took me like 15 minutes to write messages to send to her.

At the mall we basically just walked around a lot, and checked out a bunch of different stores. We bought nothing. My mom kept complaining about me not having an AC at home, and complained about wanting one. We'd argue a bit whether or not I should get one.

Then we drove back home. first stopping by at Costco. We wanted to get some Beyond Burgers or Impossible Burgers but Costco was closed for new people trying to get in, after 8:30 PM. The exit was still open, for people leaving, but it was closed to people entering. So we just ended up refilling the gas in my car instead.

Then we went home. My parents prepared meals for us, and then they went to sleep. I'm still awake hours after they fell asleep, to write this, and because I was watching Hitman Reborn.

Today and yesterday went by really fast, they were almost instant.

Anyway that was my day today and yesterday.