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.