Here is a picture of the hood. I have some better pictures that I will post soon. This picture was taken at the beginning of June. Right now the truck is painted and it is all being put back together. I'll post some more 'progress' pictures later. 

Here is the body of Jose's truck in the process of being primed. Unfortunately I didnt get a picture of it before the primer was applied but it was about 5 different colors. 

Happenings
Work today was a lot of the same, landlords being jerks and tenants not paying their rent. I did get one interesting phone call from a woman that I had talked to a week or so ago. She called to complain that no one would rent her a place to live because she had bad credit. She said that she was being discriminated against because of her terrible credit and that it wasn't right. I told her that checking credit was a landlords right and that there was no legal issue for me to deal with. Well she not-so-politely told me that I needed to MAKE a legal issue because it wasn't fair. She then went on to explain to me that people with good credit are just as likely to not pay their rent as people with bad credit. I tried to explain to her that bad credit is created by not paying rent/payments on time and therefore credit was a good indicator of whether or not someone would pay on time or pay at all. Considering this woman had just been evicted for being 3 months late on rent she did not agree with me on this. She was sure that her credit had nothing to do with her being evicted numerous times and she couldn't figure out why a landlord would not want her as a tenant. Poor woman.

After work I decided to take myself on a date to the movies. I had talked to one of the attorneys here at the office about War of the Worlds and so it made me want to go see it, so I did. It was ok. Not great but ok. I don't feel like I wasted $5 or 2 hours but I wouldn't take the time to see it again and I definitely would not buy it on DVD. Some of the special effects were neat but then again when you spend $120M+ on a movie there better be some damn good special effects. I also had never read the WoftheW book or seen the old movie so the ending was a surprise to me. I liked the idea behind the ending but it was kind of sudden. Overall it was ok if you like that kind of movie and I wouldn't stop you from going to see it.

After the movie I went home and helped my 'tio' Jose (the dad of the family that I am living with) work on his truck. He has a '79 Chevy that his late father owned and is sentimentally valuable to him. Because of this he has decided to re-do (and I mean RE-DO) the entire truck. The initial process started about 1 1/2 years ago and I am getting to see the finishing touches. He completely re-did the engine, fixed a lot of dings on the body, did some welding on it for re-enforcement, and also painted it. He has never painted a car before but it has turned out really nice. He had hoped to have it done by the 4th of July but that won't happen. His new deadline is December when his son Cody (sp?) will be back from his Mormon mission in Spain. I am pretty sure he'll have it done by the time I leave in August. Stay posted for some pictures.

Since I have been in Idaho I have also started working out (read run) on a more regular basis. Mostly because my 'cousin' Kari Jo is a crazy person when it comes to exercise. It makes me feel guilty when she is running or working out and my lazy tail is on the couch. Last night for instance, I was about to go to bed and she wanted to go run the 'stairs'. Of course I couldn't let her go by herself with the possibility of being mugged in Idaho at 10:30 pm so I tagged along. These stairs are the strangest things ever. They zig-zag up a random hill side and they lead to absolutely nothing. Quite bizarre. I'll post some pictures so you know what I mean. It has been a couple of weeks since we did the stairs so they were especially tough. I only made it up and down 3 times but Kari Jo being the soldier that she is did them 5 times. Oh well, I am used to her shaming me.

Cerebration
In today's thoughts I will be responding to Adam's and Cheeto's Blogs.

As for Adam, right on brother (to those who haven't read his most recent post about immigrants, it is really very good). Its amazing how conservative ideals can turn into liberal ones when an issue is extremely personal. Now we just need to work on putting ourselves in OTHER people's shoes more often(haha just kidding). This egocentric ideal that mainstream America holds on to has been a pet peeve of mine for quite some time now. In this respect I agree with Cheeto, its not about whitey v. Mexican, its about egocentric American v. anyone not American (well almost, white immigrants don't really seem to be considered immigrants for some reason). If some immigrant doesn't speak English, so what, either did some of your ancestors. More than likely their kids will speak English, unless of course you don't let them into school. Another thing that makes me mad about the 'immigrants are too expensive' argument is the fact that a very large number of illegal immigrants pay taxes. These taxes go to pay for programs that they will never be allowed to used so in a way they are subsidizing our excesses. Too bad they are still dirty.

And in response to Cheeto's response, I agree, it is about priorities. In this particular instance the priority seems to be re-election instead of results. The reason I say this is because we seem to be building more and more prisons and very few mental health facilities. One big reason these prisons are needed is because we are putting crazy people in jail. If we diverted some of the prison money to hospitals then it would ease the burden on the prisons. Another HUGE problem is our drug laws. In my opinion the current state of our drug laws come from the same political need to LOOK tough on crime. Unfortunately if I started on my complaints about the 'war' on drugs then I would never get any work done.

On a lighter note I did like this book that Cheeto and Shena (his wife) found and thought should be the title/theme of my blog.

Happenings
I had a pretty busy day at work yesterday. It wasn't as busy as Monday but it was still pretty crazy. I came in in the morning and finished writing some letters that I had started so that I could get Angela (my supervising attorney) to look over them. After that I met her at the Bannock county courthouse so that she could approve the letters and so that I could sit in on a hearing. The hearing was uneventful but the facts behind it were pretty interesting. I'm not sure how in depth about facts I am allowed to get without violating confidentiality so I will be very general.

An adult son suffers from some type of mental illness that makes him unable to follow ANY type of rules. So anywhere he lives he ends up being kicked out or arrested. Well the dad is the only person that is willing to accept any type of responsibility for him so he was in court attempting to get the appropriate power over the son. In order to do this the judge had to rule that the son was incapacitated. The hope is that by being considered legally incapacitated some of the pending charges against him will be dropped. It was really sad to see this father that cared so much for his son attempt to take on so much responsibility for this guy when he literally can not stay out of trouble. Anyway, it was interesting and sad at the same time.

In other news Lettie left for NC for a wedding early in the morning. I was going to go also but plane tickets had gotten expensive and I can't really afford to miss so many days of work. Without her here I will have her car and be able to do what I want. Unfortunately I usually just follow her around so I might end up with a car and no where to go. Oh well.

After work I went home watched the news and got ready for my softball game. My first game with this team didn't go so well. For the first game they had me at shortstop. I hadn't touched a softball in more than 6 years and I had only played in 4 0r 5 softball games in my entire life (I am attempting to set up some sort of excuse for what is about to come). Well I finished the game with 4 errors. The worst of which came on a pop up. The batter hit the ball really really high so I was back peddling to get to it. Well it floated further than I thought so when I tried to reach back and catch it I fell to the ground and the ball landed beside me. The guy who hit the ball thought I was going to catch it so he didn't even bother trying to run to first base, so once the ball hit the ground his entire team was yelling at him to run. Since I was on the ground I couldn't get up fast enough to throw the guy out. The crowd thought this was hilarious and I was embarrassed. On a more positive note, I went 3/3 batting and had a couple RBI's. Unfortunately in the game last night the errors continued but the good fortunes at the plate did not. I finished with 2 errors in 3 innings and I went 1/3 at the plate. I am starting to think that I was not made to play softball. It would be one thing if I embarrassed myself in front of people I knew but I don't know any of these people so it was even more embarrassing. I am still trying to decide if I am going to play in any more of their games or just sit out so I save them the errors.

After my game I went over to Omar's and watched 'swordfish'. I only saw the last 1/2 and I wasn't very impressed.

Cerebration
One of the things that has shocked me the most about working landlord/tenant issues is how mean and ruthless some landlords can be. For instance I had a guy come in a talk to me because his landlord cutoff his power and removed his front door to try to get him to move out. This is clearly not allowed and the landlord knows it. Unfortunately the Idaho law doesn't really provide much recourse. The only thing we could do is write a letter to the landlord informing him that he was breaking the law and demanding that he return the power and the door. If the landlord doesn't do this then we have to sue him. All of this can take up to a month to do. All the while this guy is living in a house with no front door and no power. When he has to go to work he is forced to leave a blanket covering the spot where the door used to be and hope that nobody walks in and steals his stuff. Sad.

Another thing that got me thinking yesterday was the court hearing I sat in on. The adult son that I made reference to early had been in prison for a number of years mostly because of his mental illness. This infuriates me. Its not that he didn't do what he did but its that his problems have not been addressed. This guy obviously needs some help and sticking him in a concrete cell with a bunch of guys that will take advantage of him is not the solution. A lot of politicians in this country aren't interested in really solving crime, they just want to be viewed as being 'tough' on crime. What a crock. If they were more interested in solving problems rather than getting re-elected then maybe we would make some progress. Get these mentally ill people out of jail and into treatment. Stop building prisons and spend money on things that will SOLVE the problem and not just mask it. Sure we feel safer when crazy people are locked up and not on the streets but does it make us feel better that we are neglecting to actually help these people. It has gotten so bad here in Idaho that this guy can't voluntarily admit himself to the hospital. He was going through a bad time, realized it and tried to commit himself but they turned him away. There wasn't enough space at the hospital. In order to be admitted they told him he had to be sent by the court. They were basically telling him to go do something crazy so that the judge would order him to be committed. What would really happen is that the judge would send him to jail and not the hospital because there is space in the jail. So in the end this guy never gets help.

Maybe more fault should be placed on the people that vote for these politicians. I mean if we changed what we demanded then they would change their stances. Of course that would require a tiny amount of critical thought and I would never expect people to do that. I mean who would want to put in that much effort into voting.

Here is a blury pic of the mountains as we are driving away from pocatello. Pocatello is pretty much surrounded by these things because its in a valley. 

This is pretty close to where we went camping. It is near scout mountain/mink creek for those of you who care. If you have never been to Idaho take note of the mountains, they are amazing. Oh yeah, that is Lettie and her car in the background. 

This is me pimping it on my first day of work in one of my new suits. Man, I look sharp. It only took a few days of wearing suits until one of the secretarys at work asked me not to dress so fancy. She must have been jealous, ha. 

This is Lettie pretending to work. When we got back to the TV station the video that she took looked like the video's that my mom used to take when I played soccer. In other words...it wasnt news material. She got an A for effort. 

This is the house that I grew up in, well for the first 6 years of my life anyway. The house went up for sell recently and Omar is a Re-max agent so he took us for a walk through memory lane. 

Here I am on the field of the World Cup qualifier. That construction vest is really a photographers vest (which I took home as a souveneir (sp?) and that cool necklace is my press credentials. 

Catch up

So Cheeto (my oldest brother) and Adam (my other brother) have started blogging and Cheeto has been giving me a hard time about starting mine, so here it is. I had a hard time coming up with a title but I decided that 'audacious cerebration' sounded good. Cheeto warned me that people wouldnt know what it meant but I have more confidence in you guys than that. If nothing else, look it up. Well actually.....I guess I will just tell you. I figured that there would be times that I wrote about things that I had been thinking about. Like social issues or current events or whatever. I like to think that I come up with my view points based on reflection and thought and not just my political allignment at the time. One of my pet peeves is discussing issues with people that align their viewpoints solely on the candidate that they support or the party that they identify with. I find that to be foolish. No candidate is right all the time and no party makes sound decisions regularly. That isn't to say that I always make the right choices or that I will always be right but hopefully I will have the cohones to admit when I am wrong. Either way I am going to express my opinion based on the information that I have and what I believe to be correct. All of that being said 'audacious cerebration' is nothing more than an interesting way to express my hope that I will have the courage and fortitude to take stances based on thought and reflection and not political alignment.

Now that I have explained all of that I guess I should probably point out that the majority of the space on this blog will be dedicated to an online journal type format. In other words I will be posting my daily activities, happenings at work, etc.

Now for an update. I got done with school on May 15 (I think that was the day of the last exam). One year of Law school down, only two more to go!!!! Actually, that is pretty scary considering how much fun I had at NYU and how fast that first year went by. After exams I spent a few more days in NYC hanging out with friends, and then I went to greensboro until May 28th or so. From GSO I flew to SLC on my way to Pocatello, Idaho. I have been here ever since. I started work at Idaho Legal Aid on June 1 and I have been working 30-40 hours a week since. I was hoping to work with migrant farm workers while I was here but so far it has been mostly poor white people. The supervising attorneys have me handling landlord/tenant issues and I have had fun with that. My biggest complaint has been that I dont have enough work to do but things have been picking up as of late. So overall I have very few complaints.

I am living with the De Los Reyes family here in Idaho. They have been family friends ever since I can remember (I consider them relatives) and they have been nice enough to let me stay with them. Lettie (my only sister) was already living with them and so I just kind of snuck in too. Lettie claims that they won't accept any type of rent payment but I havent asked them directly. I doubt that they would but sometimes I wish that they would just so I would feel better about it. I feel like such a squatter.

As for friends I have 3...my sister, kari joe, and omar. Kari jo is the only daughter of the De Los Reyes and Omar is another family friend that I have known ever since I can remember. Through those 3 people I have met some others but for the most part I hang out with them.

So far I have spent quite a bit of time outdoors. I have gone fishing twice, camping once, and hiking a few times. I have also started jogging/riding a bike somewhat regularly. Through an attorney at work I was invited to join a co-ed adult softball team so I have been doing that recently also.

As for highlights....I have seen quite a bit of my extended family that I have not seen for years so that has been nice. I also had the chance to go to a US National team world cup qualifiying game. Lettie was lucky enough to get us press credentials from her work so we were fed lunch and we got to watch from the field. I wore an orange photographer's vest but I was nothing more than a spectator. After one of the goals you could even see me on ESPN jumping up and down like an idiot. Oh well, I never pretended to be there to work anyway.

Other than that I have done some 'community service'. I helped my Aunt Karen paint the trim on her house, helped omar strip/paint his garage and his house, and I have helped in the De Los Reyes yard a bit.

To make a long story short, I havent been bored yet. I have left out a lot of detail and lots of crazy stories but it is hard to fill people in on 5 weeks worth of stuff. Hopefully I will be good about posting and I wont have to do this again.

Until next time......Mar-Cos OUT. haha