nobody likes you when you're 23

I'm pretty sure I've had a blog post that was titled "nobody likes you when you're 23" over summer of last year when I met Blink 182 drummer Travis Barker, but whatever, it's appropriate now, too.

Friday was my 24th birthday. I love my birthday. Love it. It's my favorite holiday of the year that isn't actually a holiday (but should be). After 21, birthdays for some people stop being fun. They feel like they don't have anything cool to celebrate anymore. I hope I never reach that point. Birthdays are always cool to celebrate!

24 is definitely another year older, another year closer to the big three-oh, but you know what? I'm okay with that. I actually really like it. I'm older, things are happening in my life, I'm making a difference in people's lives. On Friday each time someone asked me how old I was (after I drunkenly shouted "It's my birthday!" in their faces), I screamed "24!" because it rules being 24.

You know what else rules? My birthday headware:
This is pretty much how every conversation I had with a guy went that night:
Dude at bar: What is that?
Strawberry: What is what?
Dude at bar: That thing on your head.
Strawberry: It's a flower.
Dude at bar: Ya, but is it a hat or headband or what?
Strawberry: TODAY'S MY BIRTHDAY!!! WOOO!

I didn't have any altercations with cab drivers, thank gawd, but I did muster up the courage to take a solo cab ride home. Even though I know my out and out brawl with a cabbie was a complete fluke, I've been hesitant to take cabs anywhere by myself, especially when I'm three sheets to the wind. At around 5AM, after 5 jello shots, 6 martinis, and I don't even know how much plum wine, I couldn't wait another hour for the subway to open, I had to get home.

I hailed a cab and tried to relax even though like every other cab driver in Shanghai, this dude was flirting with disaster at pretty much every intersection. But I survived. The driver was actually really nice, I wish I knew Chinese, or at least enough to have told him it was my birthday. I could tell he wanted to talk, but since he knew no English and I know no Mandarin, he kept smiling and asking "Ding Xiang Lu?" (the street where I live) to which I kept responding "Dui" ("correct"). I'm not much of a talker that early in the morning, anyway.