My agent John Root ordered a virtual tour of my house. Check it out:

http://www.obeo.com/Public/Viewer/Unbrande...ize=true

Anderson Cooper is gone. His new family just came and picked him up. The dad of the family told me they were going to call him "Cooper", which I think is perfectly fine. I made sure to take 40 or 50 pictures of him over the past two days. He's been a good kitty, and I can only wish he and his new family a happy life with each other. I know he'll be taken care of and safe. I'm still sad about it, though, more so than I thought I would be.

Last night I emailed the family that had come to check out AC360 on Saturday, asking if I should assume it was a "no" on adopting him. She wrote me back and said they'd discussed it, and they would like to bring him home to live with them. I'm happy for the little guy. He'll have some emotional struggles getting used to a new home and new surroundings, but I think he's going to be happy with the attention he'll receive.

My house is so immaculately clean. I've been cleaning it a ton and I'm happy to say that every room, every piece of carpet, every toilet, every "nook and cranny" (ha! Connie expression!) is clean. I hope it stays that way.

The family that came to look at AC360 said they would call me back in fifteen minutes and let me know. They never called me back.

I bought a new car yesterday. I negotiated the price down over two days and got a nice 2006 XTerra that was still sitting new on the lot down at Ken Garff Nissan in Orem. I've got a brand new car with a full warranty at a used-car price. It's a great feeling.

What else... let's see. I just talked to the guy I'll be renting a room from out in Raleigh. $200 a month is even cheaper than student housing in Provo! I'll be living there for a few months. Here's the house on GMaps: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=e...oc=addr

I've been spending a lot of my free time these past couple days cleaning. The house is in pretty much as clean as it could ever be. It looks great. Someone came to look at the house yesterday, and another person is coming to look at it in about a half hour. I really credit my real estate agent John Root for getting the information out there as quickly as he did.

I also put Anderson Cooper up for adoption yesterday. I listed him on Craigslist, and already I have a family coming this afternoon to look at him. I hope the family likes him; if not this family, I hope another family is willing to take him in.

Finally, I forgot to mention that I was in a car accident a few weeks ago and that it'll likely be called a total loss by the insurance company. I'll know in a few days. Nevertheless, I'd already decided to get a new car that I can drive across the country. I have a friend in the ward who works for a dealer, and he's getting me a great deal on any car that I want. I'm looking to get something newer (2005 or 2006) that still has a good amount of warranty on it. I'll also be getting an extended warranty. More info to come...

I'm moving to Raleigh, North Carolina in a few weeks. I've accepted a position with Red Hat, makers of fine Linux software. I'm extremely excited to make a move, try something new, have an adventure, but I do feel a bit nervous at the same time.

My last day here at HPSI is February 7th, and I'll be heading to California on the 8th to see my family for a couple of days. Then I'm heading east on I-10, first to Phoenix, then to New Orleans (to visit my best friend and his family, plus I'll take in a bit of Mardi Gras -- this will be my second time), and finally on to Raleigh.

More details to come...

Perhaps this information was found in GQ, which isn't politically reputable, but the statistcs were interesting. The sources referred to by the article are the Department of Homeland Security Office of Immigration Statistics, Pew Hispanic Center, and U.S. Border Patrol.

Estimated number of illegal immigrants currently living in the United States: 12 million

Percentage of these who entered the country legally but have overstayed their visas: 45

Approximate percentage of recent Mexican immigrants who are here illegally: 85

Number of would-be illegal immigrants who died trying to cross the border in 2006, according to the U.S. Border Patrol: 441

Number that the USBP rescued: 2,928

Rank of Mexico in greatest percentage increase of illegal immigrants from 2000 to 2005: 3

Rank of India and Brazil, respectively: 1, 2

Percentage of native-born workers whose employment situation improves as the foreign-born population increases: 67

Percentage of total U.S. workforce accounted for by illegal immigrants: 5

Chance that a service-industry employee is an illegal immigrant: 1 in 10

Chance that a farmworker is an illegal immigrant: 1 in 4

Ratio of average wages of a recent illegal immigrant to those of a legal immigrant who has gained full citizenship: 1:2

Ration of the average net worth of a Hispanic household to that of a white household: less than 1:10

Percentage of foreign-born Latinos living in the United States who believe it's important for immigrants to learn English: 96

Percentage of whites who think so: 87

Percentage of Americans who say that immigration is their community's most important problem: 3

So, according to a study conducted by the federal government's immigration statistics office, the increase of illegal immigrants from India and Brazil is higher than from Mexico, yet we hear so little about anything but Mexico.

Not only that, but the government also informs us that more Latino immigrants (read: non-English speakers) think it's important for them to learn English than whites (read: English speakers) do. That seems to be one of the biggest arguments that I've heard opposing the current immigration scenario: that it wouldn't be a problem if these people would just learn our language. I guess that argument can't be used anymore -- at least not in educated discussions.

I'm loving the commercials Coors Light has been doing throughout this NFL season, the ones that use video clips of post-game press conferences edited in with a couple frat-boy-like fans in the crowd. Very creative and very funny. Yesterday I saw a new one, and it was based on one of the best quotes in the history of NFL press conferences, the infamous "Playoffs? PLAYOFFS?!" line by Jim Mora back in 2001. Here's the original:



and here's the Coors Light video:



Here's a nice "highlight reel" of some of Coach Mora's classics (CAUTION! There's a little of peppery language in there, so be advised):

I got in a car accident today, my first real accident. I was sitting in traffic on University Parkway and a girl crashed into the car two cars behind me, which ran into the car behind me, which ran into me. My trunk got dented pretty badly and a couple of my lights got crushed, and my back hurts a little bit. The girl behind me got taken to the hospital in an ambulance because she was whiplashed, but her car wasn't hardly damaged. The guy behind her, who took the brunt of the force, wasn't injured, but his car was literally totaled. Crushed. Compressed and about 3 feet shorter than it was before. After the girl crashed into the guy, she swerved to the right and hit another car in the next lane over. Overall damage: 5 cars, a whiplashed neck, and a few sore back. The police assigned all the fault to her and gave us her information. I'll call and make the claim tomorrow. My car probably has about $500 in damage, but it's all just on the body. The frame is fine.

Bukowski:

each man must realize
that it can all disappear very
quickly:
the cat, the woman, the job,
the front tire,
the bed, the walls, the
room; all our necessities
including love,
rest on foundations of sand -
and any given cause,
no matter how unrelated:
the death of a boy in Hong Kong
or a blizzard in Omaha ...
can serve as your undoing.
all your chinaware crashing to the
kitchen floor, your girl will enter
and you'll be standing, drunk,
in the center of it and she'll ask:
my god, what's the matter?
and you'll answer: I don't know,
I don't know ...

The visual here is stunning: the helplessness, the fear, the unsurety, the inability to stop this ball that's rolling down the hill. The feeling that -- and Mac might have some references and research on this feeling -- we are all pieces in a cosmic game of checkers, our sense of control only existing within our own minds, our unchangeable future. One can sense the despair in Bukowski's voice. I love this poem, despite the fact that I don't share in his anguish.