I don't think I got enough sleep, last night.  I did not stay up unusually late, nor did I get up unusually early, but I'm still tired.  Actually, I had to get up early yesterday, so that might have something to do with it.

  It's been slow, today, for which I'm thankful, though it's not even noon yet, so I won't be too joyous.  Good grief, it's only Thursday.  Feels like it should be Friday.  Monday was blazing hot... or was it Tuesday.  Yesterday was fine, with a brief but strong rain.  I haven't been outside today, but judging by the bursts of static on my radio alarm, there was probably lightening.

  There's actually nothing terribly pressing to do today (yet), and that's pretty much the only reason I'm doing this.  There are things I could do, but I haven't blogged in a while, and I have a few points of moderate interest... that I can remember right now.

  Something curious happened, a couple of weeks ago, at my favorite Chinese buffet, but first a little set up.

  In a previous entry, I told how it pretty much looked like there was a greencard marriage between the waitress with the kids and the older guy.  Well, now I'm not so sure it's actually that particular waitress that's married to him.

  I'll bring any newbies (I'm optimistic) up to speed.  My favorite Chinese buffet (only Chinese buffet in town) is ran by members of a family.  From what I understand, the mother and father moved back to China, but there are two sisters and a brother there.

  The older (I'm guessing) of the two sisters is definitely married to someone, and has two kids.  The younger sister has no children, and I'm not entirely clear on her status.  The brother, who I'm guessing is either the older or the middle in terms of age, is not married, and I have no idea if he is in a relationship, not that that detail is of any real interest to me.

  There's this older white dude, who looks like he might be in his late fifties or sixties, who is obviously related by marriage to the Chinese family, but I'm not sure about his position in regards to the restaurant.  I originally thought he own it, because he seemed to be a boss, of sorts, judging by how he occasionally talked to the employees.

  He may have an investment in the place, but he's not around nearly as often (that I've seen), and not being "bossy" when he is around, so it may be that he's confident in their ability to run the place well.

  At first, the youngest sister was not there.  I had a bit of a crush on the older sister, but that eventually wore off, as crushes do.  The younger sister showed up on the fading tail end of the crush, so, being the loyal fellow that I am, I did not yet give any "real" consideration to her.

  As the crush died, I began to notice details about the younger sister, and I liked what I saw.  But I'm not talking just about physical details; I'm talking about mannerism.

  So, one day she's sitting at a nearby table with the older dude and her niece and nephew, and they're playing some kind of board game and talking.  During the course of this, I overhear her say that she has no boyfriend, indicating it is because she has no time for one.  Naturally, this was good news to me.

  Okay, now, I originally suspected that the older sister was married to the older dude, but one day this Chinese guy came in, who had been there a couple of other times eating, and obviously knew the family.  The older sister sat down with him, and though nothing overtly indicative happened, based on how they spoke to each other with great comfort, I suspect that they may actually be married.

  So, where does this leave the older dude, if it's true?  Well, on another day, when the older dude came in, the kids were playing with the younger sister, and he said, not exactly seriously, "get off my wife".  (It was a bit loud and inappropriate, in my opinion.)

  I found this odd, because I had previous thought that I heard him call the older sister his wife once, but I'm not sure.  There's something else, but I'll get to that in just a minute.  There's something I need to explain first.

  I'm not one to jump to conclusions, but I am a hopeful person.  This means I'm fully aware that I could be completely wrong, but I have reason to suspect that the younger sister may have some level of interest in me.  Maybe it's just curiosity.  Maybe it's a mild crush.  I don't know.  I just know that her behavior suggests something to me.

  But there was one thing that kind of amped up that suspicion a bit.  When the older dude did walk in that one time and say, "get off my wife", she, liking about 30 or 40 degrees from being facing completely away from me, immediately turned and looked at me, with a very slight concerned look on her face.  At least that was my impression of it.

  This brings some questions to mind.  Is it actually her to whom he's married?  If so, the talk of a lack of boyfriend lends to the purely greencard marriage suspicion.  And if she did not have some kind of interest in me, then why would her head do almost a 180 to me at someone else calling her his wife, when there was no obvious other reason to look even in my general direction?

  Very intriguing.

  A couple of days ago, we were leaving the restaurant and I noticed a diamond (if it's real) ring on the ground between our vehicle and that of another party.  The ring had tape around part of the band, apparently because it did not fit whoever was wearing it.

  I took it back into the restaurant and to the table of the other party (the only other customers there, at the time) and asked them about it.  They looked at it, made a call, but could not verify that it belonged to anyone they knew that it could possibly belong to.

  In spite of one fellow's suggestion of pawning it, I left it with the older sister (at the counter), explaining that I found it outside, and that I didn't know if anyone would be coming back in search of it.  She said she'd hold onto it in cases someone did.

  There were some slightly awkward moments for me, in the whole event.  First of all, I was coming back in from having finished eating and left, and I was heading in the general direction of the younger sister.  I had to pass her to get to the seated party.

  She's looking at me curious and expectant, but I'm not there to talk to her.  I would have at least said something, but her English is limited enough that it would have been an event in itself just to explain it.  I had someone waiting for me outside and I felt it was not a good idea to go straight to her holding out a diamond ring.  That kind of awkward I can do without.

  I quickly weighed the options and just went on past, effectively ignoring her, which I did not particularly like doing, because it felt a little rude.

  Then there was the walk back.  The younger sister is at my right, standing in the open, and the older sister is at my left, behind the cash register counter.  Now, when I get caught up in an "unexpected" situation, I can sometimes act without thinking.  I can be more reactionary and intentional.

  So, what I intend to do is leave the ring, which means explaining the situation, which also means speaking to the person who is more likely to understand what I'm saying, which means, the older sister...

  ... yet, I find myself walking directly towards the younger sister... holding out a diamond ring.  But that's not really the concern, since I had already spent about five minutes talking to the seated party about it.

  No, what bugged me was that I realized I was uselessly heading towards her, and then, about 3 or 4 feet from her, I made a sharp turn towards the counter.  That time, it was like I effectively rejected her.  That was a go-back-in-time moment.  Let's try that again, but without being a doofus.

  I use Suave shampoo every morning, so feel free to submit any jokes that you feel are appropriate to the situation.

  On a side note, can somebody tell me how a female with no hips and no ass can totally rock a pair of jeans, as if she did have hips and an ass?

  Here's something a little odd.  The younger sister has unusually hairy arms for both an Asian and a female.  One day she was about 15 feet away, and I noticed that it looked like she might have some arm hair.  When she brought the check, I saw that she did.

  Last week, or the week before, the older sister asked us to take the brother to a garage where their van was repaired, so he could drive it back.  I noticed that he had no arm hair, or at least none easily visible from 2 feet away.

  I never noticed how much arm hair the older sister may or may not have, but perhaps that, in and of itself, says it all.

  At any rate, I'm not looking at the relative abundance of the arm hair as a bad thing (or a good thing, just so we're clear :).

  When it comes to things like telephone wallpapers or ringtones, and other situations like that where you're choosing a representation or decoration of that nature, I find it interesting to find out what I eventually settle on.

  When I was choosing what pictures I wanted for possible wallpapers, I came up with a number of prospects, and I put them all on the phone to see how they each look and "feel".

  These are my three primary choices.  I have more on the phone, but these are the three I tend to prefer using.

   

  These are ones that are on the phone, just in case I happen to want to use them, but probably won't.

   

 

  These are three lesser quality ones that I'm currently test driving.  The first one is the preferred one of the three.

   

  On to other news.  There's a lot of debate about undocumented immigrants.  A lot of people want to try to say they don't contribute to America or its economy, but that's just not true.  They make many significant contributions that are overlooked or just plain unknown to most.

  Here's a list of those contributions.

2006 (First Quarter) INS/FBI Statistical Report on Undocumented Immigrants

CRIME

     95%  of Warrants in LOS ANGELES are for ILLEGAL ALIENS

     83%  of Warrants for MURDER in Phoenix Arizona are FOR ILLEGAL ALIENS

     86%  of Warrants for MURDER in Albuquerque New Mexico are for ILLEGAL ALIENS

     75%  of those on the most wanted list in Los Angeles, Phoenix, Albuquerque are ILLEGAL ALIENS

     24.9% OF ALL INMATES  in California detention centers are Mexican Nationals here ILLEGALLY

     40.1% of all inmates in Arizona detention centers are Mexican Nationals here ILLEGALLY

     29% (630,000) Convicted ILLEGAL ALIENS felons fill our state and federal prisons at the cost of $1.5 Billion Annually

     53% Plus of all investigated burglaries reported in California, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona and Texas are perpetrated by ILLEGAL ALIENS

     50% Plus of all gang members in Los Angeles are ILLEGAL ALIENS

     71% Plus of all apprehended Cars stolen in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and California were stolen by ILLEGAL ALIENS  or "Transport Coyotes "

     47% of cited / stopped Drivers in California have NO License, NO Insurance, and NO Registration for the vehicle of that 47%,  over  92% were ILLEGAL ALIENS

     63% of cited / stopped Drivers in Arizona have NO License, NO Insurance, and NO Registration for the vehicle of that 63%, over 97% are ILLEGAL ALIENS

     66% of cited / stopped Drivers in New Mexico have NO License, NO Insurance, and NO Registration  for the vehicle Of that 66%, over  98% were ILLEGAL ALIENS

BIRTHS

    380,000 Plus "ANCHOR BABIES" were born in the U.S. in 2005 to ILLEGAL ALIEN PARENTS, making 380,000 babies automatically U.S. Citizens  97.2% of all costs incurred from those births were paid for by American taxpayers.  

    66% OF all births in California are to illegal alien Mexicans on Medi-Cal whose births were paid by taxpayers

HOUSING

    300,000 plus illegal aliens in Los Angeles Country are living in garages

    Nearly 60% of all occupants of HUD properties in the United States are illegal aliens.

TV & RADIO STATIONS

    14 out of 31 TV stations in L.C. are Spanish only

    16 out of 28 TV stations in Phoenix are Spanish only

    15 out of 24 TV stations in Albuquerque are Spanish only

    21 radio stations in Los Angeles are Spanish only

    17 radio stations in Los Angeles are Spanish only

    17 radio stations in Albuquerque are Spanish only

SCHOOLS

    34% plus of Arizona students in grades 1-12 are illegal aliens and 24% plus are non-English speaking

    39% plus of California students in grades 1-12 are illegal aliens and 42% plus are non-English speaking

    In Los Angeles County, 5.1 million people speak English - 3.9 million speak Spanish

SOCIAL SERVICES

      43% of all Food Stamps issued are to illegal aliens

      41% of all Unemployment Checks in the United States are to illegal aliens

      58% of all Welfare payments in the United States are issued to illegal aliens

      Less than 2% of illegal aliens are picking crops but 41% are on welfare

POPULATION

     Over 70% of the U.S. annual population growth (and over 90% of CA, FL, and NY) results from immigration

EMPLOYER PROFITS

     The estimated profit to U.S. corporations and businesses employing illegal aliens in 2005 was more than 2.36 trillion

TAXES

    62% of all "undocumented immigrants" in the U.S. are working for cash and not paying taxes, predominantly illegal aliens are working without a green card

    The cost of immigration to the American taxpayer in 1997 (last known calculation by Professor Donald Huddle, Rice University) was a NET (after subtracting taxes immigrants pay), $70 Billion per year.  [What are the 2006 costs?]

    The lifetime fiscal impact (taxes paid minus services used) for the average illegal alien is $55,000 cost to the American taxpayer in a 5-year span.  You personally pay $11,000 every year to illegal aliens.

JOBS (per Center for Immigration Studies - September 2006)

    Between 2000 and 2005, 4.1 million immigrant workers arrived in the U.S., accounting for 86% of the net increase in the total number of employed persons (16 & older), the highest share ever recorded in the U.S.

    Of the 4.1 million, between 1.4 and 2.7 million are estimated to be illegal aliens.  Also, between 2000 and 2005, the number of young (16 to 34) native-born men employed declined by 1.7 million - at the same time, the number of new male immigrant workers increased by 1.9 million.

  So, the next time some jerk conservative tries to tell you how much illegal aliens aren't contributing, you can give him or her what for and rub this in his or her face.

  Random helpful hint:  If you ever find yourself short of money, just find yourself an undocumented handgun, go into any bank, and ask for an undocumented withdrawal.  Make very sure that everything is undocumented to keep it all nice and legal.

  Here's some nice quotes:

"Tolerance is the virtue of a man without convictions" -G.K. Chesterton

"A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity" -Sigmund Freud

"Broad-minded is just another way of saying a fellow's too lazy to form an opinion" -Will Rogers

"The Taxpayer:  Someone who works for the government but doesn't have to take a civil service examination" -Ronald Reagan

"The nine most terrifying words in the English language are:  I'm from the government and I'm here to help" -Ronald Reagan

"We must not look to government to solve our problems.  Government is the problem." -Ronald Reagan

"A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side during a quarrel" -Robert Frost

"You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves" -Abraham Lincoln

  Bumper Stickers

"Liberalism:  The haunting fear someone, somewhere, can help themselves"

"Bigot:  A Conservative winning an argument with a Liberal"

"The New Europe  ...reminding you why your ancestors left the Old Europe"

"Taxation WITH representation ain't so great either"

  Well, I better get this HTMLed up before I lose interest.