Damn it. Damnnnnnnn. IF anyone knows who that girl who studied at the University Circle Library with the black Integ...

This is so hopeless. I'm getting nowhere.

Things are slowly changing around here.

I'm starting to notice things I've missed for too long. Tonight my dad showed me an album--the album I walked past at least 30 times in the past few months--of his family back in PI. My family. I'm not quite sure why I didn't check it out earlier, but it was nice that my dad was there to tell me the story of all the faces. Looking through my family's photo albums used to be very much like looking through someone else's pictures. There were so many people I had never met, and I'm pretty sure I've never met the majority of them, at least on my mom's side. Looking through this album was different though. My aunt recently went to the PI and hunted all the photos down and put them all in this album. I saw a piece of myself in those pictures. I started to see myself in my parents. This concept of family that I've long struggled with is suddenly revealing itself to me. For a long time I've felt a sense of detachment and deprivation when it came to family. What have I been missing?

All of this history and so many stories still unheard... I suddenly have a strong urge to buy a new camera and lay down some history of my own.

I've been away for a long time. There are all sorts of things I think about when I go home. A few months ago I went to mass back home and then I just drove around afterward, a little disappointed that I didn't see many people I remember. Grand Avenue. Valley View Drive. Chino Hills Parkway. Rancho Hills Drive. Woodvivew Lane. Butterfield Ranch Road. Soquel Canyon Parkway. The streets of my life. You gain a whole new perspective on life when you see it between the lines, between the memories. I traced those roads until well after dusk, thinking of the countless times I'd taken the same roads.

Today I went to St. Paul the Apostle's Harvest Festival. I used to look forward to it every year before I left for college. I never ever got to go to an arcade, so I'd save up all the change I got all year so I could blow it all in a few hours playing Area 51 or NBA Jam or the stupid mouse-running-into-a-random-hole betting game. This was the first time I've gone since high school. There were all sorts of reminders why I'm glad I'm past that junior high/high school age. So much stress over feeling like you were part of something... it's something else to walk through that atmosphere knowing exactly who you are, and even more, what you're not.

Still, it was good seeing some old faces. My ninang, her daughter Vanessa, Rod from confirmation classes, Marc, Ray, Nim, JP... and then some other faces... Jeff, Mike, Jon's little sister... all who probably wouldn't recognize me if I stepped right in front of them. It's one of those things that always bothered me a little bit... I always remember people who don't remember me.

I had some Filipino food before I went to figure out how to lose the rest of the money in my wallet. I was thinking about bingo for a while, but I needed something with more action. I went 0-3 at the basketball game, but won on my first try at some knock-the-coin-off-the-ball-pool-style game and won a wannabe Pooh bear that's supposed to make sounds, but doesn't work. And then I thought, what am I going to do with this? I guess I'll have plenty of time to think about it.

What do you do with carnival prizes when you're single? Keep them as furry trophies? The more time passes, the more I feel like relationships are impossible. I mean, what the heck... how are two compatible, single people supposed to get together when there are so many other things working against it? Not to mention all the seemingly compatible yet tragically incompatible people you would like to get to know better.

I don't know. Maybe this is not my thing. But there was the girl with the beautiful eyes at church today. Man, I wonder what they were saying. I think my standards have been too high at times, but more and more I've been trying hard not to get my hopes up thinking about one girl, so I end up liking qualities and forgetting to look at the person instead. There's also the problem of falling for the wrong girls... taken, or unavailable, or unavailable. Oh man. I give up. I have a feeling whatever I think might happen will turn out completely different. Whatever.