Yeah, I know... It's been a long time since my last entry. What can I say? Life has been hectic... I actually had this really long entry typed out, but I realized it was full of long and boring details so much so that even I didn't want to read it so I'll try to keep it as concise as my convoluted mind will allow. If you can recall to the last entry, there was this chick I was totally vibing and I thought I had an "in" because I believed it was her bag that was left in my car that drunken evening. It turns out it was someone else's bag and although the actual owner of the bag is quite the hottie, she also happens to be kinda sorta seeing someone who I'm totally cool with so I simply returned the bag in our next meeting to it's rightful owner.

Although I've made my interest known of this girl with whom I was totally feeling to my friends, it looks like there are enough degrees of separation between our mutual friends (a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend) enough so that several weeks have gone by and we haven't had a chance to run into each other again. I really hate leaving things up to chance but I guess in this case I really have no choice. I'll just have to sit tight, cross my fingers and hope we will run into each other again sometime soon.

This is not to say that I've been sitting idly by waiting for things to happen to me. I actually had a date last Friday, nothing fancy just dinner and a movie. We had some Japanese food and watched Sin City. Overall I'd say it was an OK date with some decent conversation but it lacked the degree of sexual chemistry that I seek. I guess I shouldn't expect much from a first date, but sometimes you just know if it's there or not. You can tell by the way she looks at you, you can tell by the gravitational attraction between the two bodies. It just wasn't quite there.

It's funny how we actually know each other though. She was the ex-girlfriend of my cousin Ray, my best friend who passed away a few years back. We've never really kept in contact as friends until a chance meeting a few months back when I was watching a movie with a friend (my ex actually) before she got married and moved off to Michigan to live with her husband. My ex and I exchanged numbers with her, but I myself never really had an occasion to call her.

My ex however was keeping in contact with her and she kind of prompted me to give her a call. It's a little weird, she's in this long-term, on and off relationship. From what I gather, the state of their relationship now is that of "friends with benefits". I guess it explains the lack of sexual chemistry between us. I mean if she's getting it somewhere else she doesn't necessarily need it from me and I guess I need my potential partner to have at least some degree of sexual hunger. I guess I could leave things at the friendship tip with her and just see where it goes.

Honestly though, Ray was in a similar situation with her and even back then, she was going with the same on-and-off-again boyfriend. I don't quite know how he did it with her and with all the women he was with, but he really had this way of charming women. If I were to wager a guess, I'd say he got them by putting all of his heart and passion into it. I think he was really into the conquest, chase and ultimate acquisition of a girl's heart and his repeated ability to capture a girl's heart was always a trait I found admirable.

Really though I think he loved the challenge more than anything else. For some reason the women that he wanted the most were the ones that were most difficult to attain and the few that he had gotten close to but couldn't quite conquer were the ones he had placed highest on the proverbial pedestal. Ironically the girls that gave in and fell totally in love him were the ones that ultimately fell over to the wayside and wound up with the broken heart. It's unfortunate that his life ended before he reached the point in life where desire meets attainment.

If anything it makes the moments I have left of my life, however plentiful of few they may be, all the more precious. I just wish I had a better idea of how to achieve the kind of deep level of fulfillment I'm searching for instead of the usual feeling of emptiness that seems like the norm of my life. It's tough when there is so much sadness going on around me. My once healthy paternal grandfather's health is deteriorating, so is my aunt who suffered a stroke a few years back and my maternal grandfather, the one who raised me, it's difficult to see him in the state of health he is in now.

One of the more recent things that had really gotten to me was my dad. For most of my life the conversations between my dad and me involve him lecturing me in some way, even well into my adulthood it seems he has always talked down to me like I was some child that needed to learn a lesson and he always seemed to put himself as the shining example of the kind of man I should evolve into. Don't get me wrong, I know there are quite a few things I could probably learn through example of how he has lived his life, but for as long as I've known him I've never really perceived him as a humble man. He just never portrayed himself to me that way.

All that changed a few weeks back. He usually calls me a few times a month just to keep in touch, but instead of the usual idle conversation and/or lecture he informed me of some business deal gone sour. You know those stupid fucking spam emails from some so-called representative of some 3rd world county saying that there are millions of dollars that are "tied up" and need to be handled by some recipient in the US? Well my dad actually followed up on one or more of those e-mails. He was as careful as one could possibly be for a man of his knowledge, not giving out any large sums of money, following up with the state department to make sure the funds weren't known to be illegal. There was even a large sum of money I'm talking millions, that were wire transferred to an account he had in a major US bank.

It turns out however, that the funds were frozen so he couldn't actually touch any of it and though some elaborate identity theft scam he wound up owing some ungodly amount of money for things he never personally authorized. He is of course trying to dispute all of this, but until he does it seems he is on the verge of bankruptcy and may wind up losing all his investments and properties, the very things he has been working on his entire life. Under the bankruptcy law his primary property, car and retirement pension are safe but all his other assets be liquidated and dissolved, not to mention his once spotless credit rating. Hopefully it won't come to all that but really, for the first time in my life at least my dad was talking to me as a humbled man who admittedly made a huge and terrible mistake and for the first time since I was a child I actually felt emotion for him. It's fucking weird how shit like this happens.

You think you are strong, willing and able to handle the twist and turns life throws at you but then you miss something and suddenly you are driving off of some cliff. But yeah, whatever. I guess you just have to take the good with the bad. I can visualize myself going places in the future, I know I can make something good happen in my life. My problem is not the future. My problem is the here and now. It always seems like life is about struggle, sacrifice and self-denial. I keep wondering when things are going to ease up, when can I finally breathe free? I want the heaviness and the burden I feel to just lift. When can I take my turn to fly?

I don't know, maybe it's just me expecting life to unrealistically be a certain way. Maybe there's just no purpose, no rhyme or reason. The sum totality of the universe is all just a series or random occurrences and it doesn't really matter if things happen one way or another. Maybe it's just me thinking way too much as usual. I gotta stop fucking doing that shit. Anyway all this contemplating is making me hungry, so I'm going to fix me a big plate of something not so healthy. Maybe the flesh of a dead animal or two, deep fried of course and if I'm really lucky I'll get to choke on a really big piece. But yeah, whatever. Until next time...