plants may not have brains, but at least they can take care of themselves
that is the title of a song i heard on the radio tonight, i kid you not!

instead of recapping what happened tonight and last friday night, i will refer you to both freesia and jaime's blogs, respectively.

i stayed in all day today and finished my first grad school app of this round of apps. feels decently good. i was pleasantly surprised that last year's personal statement required almost no editing. on the other hand, i spent hours and hours touching up my resume, debating the difference between "organized" and "managed" and whether i should spell out "United States" or just put "U.S." looking at the resume, i couldn't help but think: damn, i'd hire me. shoot. i've got a mad sexy resume, yo.

on a related note, my boss from this summer called me to follow up on the letter of recommendation he wrote for me. it was nice to talk to him. he was always very nice to margot and i, in an uncle-y sort of way, you know, supportive and caring, asking lots of good questions about your path in life, etc. he was always trying to steer us into law school, to which we politely nodded and smiled, even though neither of us intended to do that.

funny thing, though: tonight my mom said that she supported my decision to go to j-school, but was hoping that i would consider law school, and well, she continued, who knows, maybe i could do both? i was shocked, since i off-handedly mentioned law school just a few weeks ago (an idea i quickly abandoned), and i don't recall her jumping off her chair or anything. my mom is great because, in total atypical chinese mom style, she stays out of my decisions about my future and my sister's as well. sometimes i wonder what she really wanted me to be, but i know she's proud of what i've chosen to do. i know this because she and i have the same doctor, and the doctor tells me that my mom brags about my sister and i. aw shucks.

i know my dad is mad proud of me, too, because he thinks i'm really an artist at heart, like him. he has always pushed me to work more on my creative writing and move away from journalism, but i think i'm too chicken to do that. i think he's also down with me because he was an activist in the 1960s at city college, and he's happy to see me work on things like hardboiled because he's all about the people, too.

it's cool to have your parents be 100% behind anything you want to do. one less thing to worry about. i think they'd be alright if i told them i wanted to go back and get a degree in art history, or move to another country to work (for a year or so), or travel, or whatever. i've never had to stress about making them happy or getting them off my back or living up to their expectations. the only thing they've ever wanted was for my sister and i to be happy. and they really meant that, and not in the "we know what will make you happy, too" type of way either. my parents are pretty cool people.

at the risk of making this an obscenely long post, one more thing and i'm done. yesterday before i went out to meet kristin and freesia, my mom said to me, totally out of nowhere: "you never know, you might meet the man of your dreams tonight." i immediately replied that i had already met him. ah, my male readers, you're so vain, i bet you think this song is about you. and maybe it is. but my point is that i think i've met so many cool guys that it's highly likely that i've already met "the man of my dreams," although it's a concept that i don't really believe in anyways. i don't buy the lightning bolt, or the tingly feeling, or any type of immediate feeling of someone being The One. i also don't really have a laundry list of characteristics i look for in any ideal male prototype. i believe in connections (physical, emotional, intellectual, friendster) and in chemistry (thanks to bethany, summer '01). you just can't idealize or romanticize relationships. there is no empty pedestal in my life that i'm looking to fill with a guy. so why do i think i've already met this "man of my dreams"? i know a lot of guys who can be the "man of my dreams" for the night, or two weeks, two months, maybe even two years. and i'm pretty content with knowing just that fact. right now, that's enough for me.