Happenings
(Insert excuse for not blogging here)

Well, its been a while, AGAIN. Work has been work (I know you are probably tired of reading that). Nothing much changes around the office. I got cussed out for the first time. The guy was about 70 and he smelt bad. He was pissed that his landlord took his $200 security deposit and I won't go find him and beat him up. I just smiled as he stormed out the door. Oh well. I also had my first success in the courtroom this week. A lady that was being evicted had received improper notice so I drew up a motion to dismiss for improper procedure and the judge threw out the eviction. I felt good about that. She will still be evicted but atleast we bought her a little more time. It was even more gratifying because I have received numerous complaints from tenants about this same landlord and so I have been in contact with the landlord and he is a jerk. He likes to call and talk trash. I guess he thinks that because I am only an intern that I don't know what I am talking about but he is an idiot. I won this time, chump.

On Friday Lettie and I went up to Rigby, Idaho to go to a cookout which was really a family reunion for my Great Aunt Pat's family. Somehow we got invited. I got to see family that I had never seen and I met Annette. Annette is one of my Mom's cousins and evidently they were best friends growing up. Mom is always telling Annette stories so it was nice to finally get to meet her. She is a nice lady and she reminds me a lot of my Mom. After the cookout we went to Aunt Pat's house and visited with her, Annette, Annette's husband, and her daughter Ashley.

On Saturday on of Omar's friends was having a housing warming party/cookout so we went to that and then a place called Hooligan's (in downtown Pocatello) was having an anniversary party so that's where we ended the night.

Went to church on Sunday and then to ride horses at my cousin Rich's again. I like going to his place. His wife and kids are really nice and we have fun over there. Too bad they don't live back east.

So far this week I have been working and doing good deeds after work. I helped some guy move furniture and junk from his storage units to his new house and I helped Omar install a swamp cooler (its a Idaho/Utah thing, you wouldn't understand).

Last night Omar, his friend, and I went to see "Wedding Crashers". It is a hilarious movie. I know some of my family members won't watch it but if you a rated R watcher, you should definitely check it out. It is even funnier than "Old School" if you can believe that.


Cerebration

So I was selected to be on the Environmental Law Journal of NYU. I can't decide how I feel about that. My family already thinks I am a hippy but I plan on staying on and hopefully learning a lot.

It is kind of crazy how these things work out. I didn't really want ELJ as a journal but spending the summer in Idaho has made me more appreciative of the unspoiled wilderness (there is more of that out here than in NYC). Also, it hasn't been very long ago that I was talking to my mom about a population quota. I was telling her that if I was given the option to live on the earth under a population quota (if God only allowed a certain number of people on Earth at any given time) but had to wait a looooooooong time for my turn on Earth than I would do it. I feel like humans ruin the Earth in a lot of ways. Sometimes it isn't hard for me to see our species as a more of a parasite to the Earth than anything else. I mean nature heals itself in a lot of ways but once there are so many of us the balance gets all out of whack. I think it would be fun to live amongst more people and have more wilderness to roam but oh well. Maybe this journal will be good after all.

All of this leads me to another thought that maybe be too serious for some of you but get over it or stop reading. Up to this point in my life I feel like I have left a lot of things up to chance. In my own conceited way I have the feeling that my life is being guided. For instance, in high school I really wanted to go to the Air Force Academy. I went through the entire process, got nominated three times over but was then disqualified for something I will not discuss here. At the time I was really sad. Because I had planned on going to the AFA I had only applied to other schools that did not require essays (NC State and UNCG). I know I am lazy. I had received mail and invitations to apply to many other schools, including ivys, but I was sure the AFA was for me. Well once I was disqualified from there I decided not to apply for a waiver (because I was bitter) and I accepted a spot at NCSU instead. Looking back on it now, there are hundreds of reasons why I am happy I went to NCSU instead of the AFA. For one, I would probably be in Iraq right now and I would be really mad about that. In addition, the AFA has gotten bad press recently for their intolerance of other religions (including LDS folks) as well as their sexual harassment problems. Both of which I am glad I was not around for. At the time I thought being rejected from the AFA was terrible but now I see it has someone making sure that my life was lead in the right direction.

My law school selection kind of followed the same pattern. NYU wasn't at the top of my list but I am so very grateful that I ended up there. I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Maybe this ELJ thing is the same kind of deal. Maybe I don't realize why I am supposed to be on that journal or what I am supposed to learn but in 5 years maybe I will know.

Here is Lettie with Gus, Rich's youngest son. He is 3 and not afraid of anything. He insisted on me taking this picture by the way. 

That big guy on the left is my cousin Rich and on the right is his daughter Samantha. Evidently she is good at riding horses because she showed me some belt buckles from a Rodeo comeptition where she first place in two events. I was impressed.

This is Zeke, my cousin Rich's son. He puts me to shame, I think he is 7 and he can ride a horse like a champ. 

This is cowboy Marcos 

Happenings

Work was work (I'm starting to sound like Cheeto, that is sad). Nothing at all exciting happened. On Tuesday after work I went home, took a nap, ate dinner, chilled with my mom, and then went to bed. That was it. Seriously.

On Wednesday after work I went home, changed clothes, and headed to Blackfoot to visit my cousin Rich, his wife, and his kids. Lettie and I had been planning for a while to go see them because the live out in the middle of nowhere AND they have a bunch of horses so we wanted to go ride. Well Wednesday turned out to be the day. We got there around 5:45 and I rode 4-wheelers around with the kids until it was time to eat. After dinner we went out, saddled up the horses, and went ridin'. Rich hadn't been on the horses in a while so some of them weren't too excited about being ridden. The horse Lettie was riding kind of went crazy a couple of times but she seemed to handle it ok. I talked to her this morning and she said she was sore.

I left Blackfoot around 9:45 and came back to Pocatello. Omar has finally moved his stuff into the new house so I went over there for a little while to help him arrange his living room.

Happenings
I haven't been blogging very long and I am already a blog slacker. Not a good sign for things to come. Work last week was more of the same. Mean landlords, people not paying their rent, and a lot of no shows for appointments.

Last week at some point Adam decided that he didn't want to wait for the Marines to move his stuff because they were taking too long. Instead he decided to pack up the apartment and load it up on a truck on his own. I think he had a little help with the actual loading but that's it. He left San Diego Friday afternoon and got to Utah early (read 2 a.m.) Saturday morning. Lettie, Mom, and I all went down on Friday so that we could be there to help him unload on Saturday. As planned we got up early Saturday and helped them unload the truck. Lots of people showed up to help, including two of their neighbors. Everyone seemed really nice.

That afternoon we went out to Outback for dinner along with the entire De Los Reyes crew (minus Kari Jo). After dinner Adam had to get to the airport to fly back to San Diego.

Lettie, Mom, and I then drove back to Pocatello. I ended up staying out really late with Omar and friends, but we had a good time.

On Sunday Lettie, Mom, and I drove to Rigby to eat lunch with a bunch of my Aunts and Uncles. It was a good time. When we first got there Uncle Brent was doing stuff with his cows so Lettie and I went out to join him. He had just gotten a new shipment of calves in and was giving some of them medicine. One of the older cows (probably 8-12 months old) had been bloating so we went out to check on it. When we found it, it was still bloated and having a hard time breathing. For those of you who haven't spent much time on a farm, when a cow gets really bloated they have a hard time getting rid of the excess gas. If they can't belch or fart it out then something has to be done or the cow will pretty much suffocate to death because of the extreme pressure on their diaphram. If nothing is helping the cow then you are forced to stab the it in the side so that air can finally escape. Well Uncle Brent had done this the day before and the cow was still bloated so he was forced to cut the cow again. Since Lettie and I were with him he had us hold the cow while he stabbed a screwdriver into the cut made the day before (he had to do this to find the hole in stomach and line it up with the hole in the skin) and then he inserted a rubber plunger type thing to keep the holes open and allow the air to escape. So there I was standing in this cow pen, with the smell of manure and cow urine wafting through the air, the sun beating down on my face to the tune of almost 100 degrees, along with the whooooooooooosh sound coming out of the cow's stomach. All of these things put together made me a little queasy. I had to excuse myself to the truck.

After lunch was over I rode with my Uncle Kay back down to Utah. I had a practice interview on Monday so I stayed at his house down there.

On Monday I got up and went to the practice interview. I met with a guy named Brad Jacobsen that practiced in a mid-sized firm in Salt Lake. He graduated in the early 90's from NYU and had been in Salt Lake for a few years. He gave me some really helpful advice and then took me to lunch along with another associate that went to New York law school. We all discussed NY over lunch. Brad worked for Cadwalader in NY after law school so I asked him if he knew Mer's dad. He happened to have left before D-Block moved to Cadwalader but he knew of him and the other guy had interviewed there so he knew him also. I guess it's a small world after all.

After the interview I stopped by Barnes & Noble to pick up a few books and then headed back to Pocatello. Went out to dinner with Omar and one of his friends and then helped Omar paint until I went home to go to bed.

Happenings

Had a rather uneventful day at work. Just the usual, a few calls, a few appointments, and a few walk-ins.

After work however was a different story. I was walking on my way to meet Kari Jo (because I don't have a car out here) and Omar called and asked if I wanted to go swimming. Taking into account that it was 100+ degrees outside, I decided it was a good idea. So Omar picked me up on the side of the road and we went to his place to change clothes. While we were there I asked him how much it would cost to get into the public pool and he looked at me like I was crazy. Fortunate for me when he said swimming, he meant boating. I hadn't been out on a boat since I have been here so I was excited. Omar's friend Kevin picked us up and we headed to American Falls to meet Kevin's friends/co-workers Lonnie and _______ (Lonnie's brother, I cant remember his name right now). Lonnie, his bro, and his bro's girlfriend were already out on the lake so they just came in to get us. On the way to the lake Kevin was telling me that everyone was going to wakeboard (They tell me it is very similar to snowboarding but I have never done that before). Well I have water-skied and I have knee boarded but I had never wake boarded so I knew it was going to be an adventure. Everyone except for Omar and me had done it so we had some good teachers. To make a long story short Omar went first and got up on his second try. He wasn't up very long when he decided he wanted to jump some wake, needless to say he bit it pretty hard. When it was my turn I got up on my feet the first time but it took 3 or 4 times before I could ride for any length of time. I never got brave enough to jump the wake but I had a really good time regardless. When it started to get dark we went in and then went to Pizza Hut for dinner.


Cerebration

I want to be a train engineer. You know, the guy who drives the train. Since I am having doubts about law school I might as well go on leave and fulfill the desire to be a train engineer. I decided on this profession because that is what all the guys do that we went boating with (except Omar). They make good money ($80k or more a year) and it doesn't require any additional schooling. NYU allows students to go on leave in between law school years so why shouldn't I? I mean, I'll be making enough money to make payments on my school loans and such. Just something to think about.

Notice the flowers on the shoes.

More amazing fews from I-15
On the way to Las Vegas from Idaho you have to drive through a small piece of Arizona. It was by far the most beautiful piece of road I have ever been on. It is really windy and windey but incredible. I felt like an idiot taking pictures while I was driving but I HAD to. You can tell in this picture how close you are to some of the canyone walls. Craziness.
Pretty amazing stuff in Arizona.
Im so cool.
This picture is here just to embarass Lettie. I hope it works :)
On the way back up to Idaho I decided that I wanted to take pictures with all of the state signs that we past. Unfortunately I forgot to get one of the Nevada sign.

This is another shot of Ethan. This was his entire outfit. See below for an explanation. I know Adam is going to love to see this one. In this shot Ethan is at my Aunt Lettie's house and he is wearing some wooden shoes from the Netherlands. Aunt Lettie's husband sent these to her when he was deployed during WWII. I think Ethan wore them the entire weekend. He found them sitting in the living room, tried them on and saw that they fit perfectly, so they became his 'flower shoes'. By the way, when he wore them he insisted on wearing nothing more than a diaper and he HAD to drape the blanket around him like a dress. It was hilarious.



This is little Garret making the 'not so happy' face aka 'the gas face'

Happenings
Long time, no bloggy. I guess it is time for another update.

I only worked Tuesday and Wednesday of last week on account of the 4th of July being on Monday and my trip to Las Vegas commencing Thursday. Nothing exciting happened at work it was kind of busy, I had a number of things to catch up on since I had been gone for a while.

Lettie and I drove to Las Vegas on Thursday morning to meet my mom, Melissa (my sister-in-law), and my two nephews. The real reason for meeting the in LV was because my Great-Aunt Lettie lives in there and her health has been declining recently. It turns out that she has been having 'mini-strokes' which weren't very noticeable but they had gotten so bad that it was obvious something was wrong. As a result of the strokes she has had a hard time getting around because she has lost a great deal of strength in her limbs. We are kind of afraid that she is only going to get worse so we wanted to go visit with her before it was too late. Aunt Lettie is my grandmother's sister and I hadn't seen her in a number of years but I remembered her much better than I remember my grandma who died when I was young, so I was excited to go see her. The drive to Las Vegas from Pocatello is like 9 hours so we left around 10 a.m. and didn't get to LV until 7 or 8 p.m. LV time. My mom and Melissa were already there, along with my nephews. I had not seen my newest nephew, Garret, yet and I hadn't seen my other nephew, Ethan Marcos, in a while so I was excited to see them. On Thursday night Lettie and I went to In & Out Burger for a midnight snack/dinner and then stayed at my cousin Blair's house. He is a dentist there in LV so he makes pretty good money and has a nice big house. On Friday we woke up and went to my Aunt Lettie's house where we ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner. In fact I got to her house at 10 a.m. and didn't leave until after midnight. For the majority of the day I was the only male in the house over the age of 3 so I had to put up with a lot of giggling. All in all it was a nice day, although not very exciting, but it was nice to get to spend so much time with my Aunt. On Saturday we woke up and headed out of town. Well before we left we had to stop at In & Out one more time.

[Funny note here: while we were in In & Out there was a girl that kept staring at me and I kind of ignored it, just assuming she was admiring my good looks. I have gotten used to this over the years. Well by the time we were ordering she was staring at all of us so I wasn't so flattered. Lettie walked toward where this girl and her two friends were sitting and she asked Lettie if she was from NC. Lettie told her that she was and then the she asked where we were from. Well it turns out that these people in the booth next to us were from Greensboro also. Kind of crazy. Oh and by the way she was staring at me because I had an NC State T-shirt on.]

Once we finally left Vegas we drove to Layton, UT where Adam and Melissa's new house his. We took a little tour and then pretty much called it a night. On Sunday we went to church where Melissa and Adam will be going. Everyone thought Ethan and Garret were my kids. I had to tell atleast 4 people that they were my nephews. I guess Mormons are used to seeing 23 year olds with two kids running around. On Sunday afternoon we went down to Provo, UT to eat with a bunch of kids that we know from NC and then we drove back to Poky. All in all I think I was in the car for atleast 20 hours. Didn't feel much like a weekend.

Work so far this week has been pretty busy. Nothing really interesting to note. I took some pictures of my nephews and I will post them on here soon.


Cerebration

While I was gone this weekend I finished "Angels & Demons" (It was an OK book. I don't think I really like fiction. I haven't decided if I am going to waste my time reading "The Da Vinci Code" when I didn't really like A&D) and I read another book called "Tuesdays with Morrie" (If you haven't read it I would strongly recommend it. Mer says it is sappy, which it kind of is, but it is a really good book with some interesting insights). Reading Morrie's story and visiting with my Aunt had me thinking about death a little bit while I was gone. What my Aunt and Morrie have in common is how at peace they seem to be with themselves. I'm not saying my Aunt is about to die but she is 85+ and she has had some health problems recently so it doesn't seem far off. Anyway, I was just thinking that I hope once I am about to die I will feel so at peace. I don't feel like that would be the case if I found out I was going to die anytime soon. It just made me wonder, for example, if law school is what I really want to be doing. I have thought about this before but quickly dismissed the thought because it seems to late at this point. The larger point though is, what would you do different if you knew you had a very limited amount of time left on Earth? Would you be so concerend about your education or making money? Would you spend more time with your family and less at work/school? Anyway, for most of us we would do things very differently. So why don't we live this way all the time? Why don't we make these changes now. I mean we KNOW we have a limited amount of time here so why not live the way we would if we had 5 years of life left. Or 1 year, or 6 months?

Going to see my aunt was really important this weekend because I feel like I may not get to see her alive again but I should have been that eager to visit her 6 months ago when I had no idea she was doing so bad.

Anyway all of these thoughts about death just had me thinking about the priorities that we set for ourselves and I just wanted everyone else to think about it too. I'm sure you will do like I did, think about it for a few minutes and then quickly remove it from your thoughts because it is simpler to not consider such deeo and important issues. We are so reluctant to change important things about our lives even though we should. Must be human nature.

Here is an after pic of our 'hike'. Even after the forced climbing mer is still all smiles 

This was the funniest thing about olympic park. These are ramps that the freestyle skiers use to practice in the summer. Instead of landing on snow, they just land in the water. 

This is a shot of the concert on Sunday. This was early in the evening at it didnt do anything but get more crowded. By the end of the night there were so many people in front of the stage, guys were crowd surfing 

This is the opposite side of the mountain where the gondola continues. I thought about hiking to the end but what you can't see from this picture is how steep the canyon is. 

This is a shot of the resort from the very top of the mountain. You can see the gondola there on the right. I was thinking that it ended at the top of the mountain but i was wrong (you will see in the next photo)

On our way back down the mountain we saw this sign. It made me laugh. 

This hill that Mer is climbing up was pretty damn steep. Those people you see at the bottom had been following us but at this point they began to realize that we didnt know where we are going. I really wish that this picture had some audio on it because if it did you would hear Meredith screaming (as she is climbing) "I'm turning around, I'm serious, I'm about to turn around. Bye, I'm turning around, I'll see you later, I am really turning around (still climbing)." By the time she got to the top she said she was about to faint.

There is another shot of our resort, a little further up 

Here I am chilling during our first rest stop. The resort is what you can see over my left shoulder.  

Happenings
So I left work early on Thursday (around 3), I didn't go to work on Friday, and Monday was a holiday. You may be asking yourself, what in the world did Marcos do with such a long weekend? Well I am about to tell you. I went to Park City Utah with Mer.

Her plane was supposed to get in at 6:30ish so she insisted that I leave work at 3:30 so that she didn't have to wait at the airport. Well I did leave at 3:30, got there at 5:45 and the plane didn't land until 7ish. Oh well, its not like I was doing anything at work.

Park City, for those of you who have never been there, is a beautiful place. I was thinking that summertime would be it's off season, since it is known for its skiing, but it seems that it never really has an off season. When we got there on Thursday it was pretty much dead. By the time Friday afternoon rolled around people were starting to show up and by Sunday it was packed. The place we stayed in had a really cool pool (that I forgot to take pictures of) and we were at the base of the mountain so there was plenty of hiking. Hiking, swimming, and eating were pretty much my three main activities for the weekend. On Sunday the resort had a concert so we went to that along with everyone else in Park City.

Mer and I decided that we wanted to partake is some type of outdoor adventure while we were there so we designated Saturday as the day it would take place. Our options were fly fishing, white water rafting, 'sea' kyaking (I was puzzled by this one since Utah land locked), or horseback riding. So we went hiking. I really wanted to fly fish but it was $300+. My second choice was rafting but Mer chickened out because she was convinced that she would drown. Sea kyaking cost the same as rafting but it seemed pretty boring. As for horseback riding, I have ridden a few times and evidently Meredith has not and she didn't want to go for the first time with an 'expert'. So with all of those options canceled out, hiking was the only thing left (besides swimming at the pool and that isn't much of an adventure).

So hiking it was. We ate breakfast at the resort's restaurant (which was pretty expensive but really good) then headed out on our trek. We were gone all of about 15 minutes when Mer needed her first break. It wasn't a good sign for things to come. The trail was extremely steep and it was incredibly hot. We climbed for about 45 minutes, got about 2/3's of the way up, and Mer had, had enough. I tried to convince her to follow me to the top but she refused since she had already climbed twice as far as she wanted. I should make a note here that unlike everyone else we saw hiking, we decided we didn't need a map and even though those people had maps, 4 of them tried to follow us. They soon realized that I didn't know where I was going and turned around. I like to think that it was really because the path we had taken was so arduous that they couldn't possibly keep up but I think it had more to do with the fact that we looked lost.

Since we had gotten so close to the top and didn't quite make it, I decided that I would try again the next day. It didn't take very long to realize that even though we were 2/3's of the way up the hardest part was still to come. On a stretch of trail that was about 30 yards long I had to stop and rest 3 times. Not because I am that lazy but because it was that steep. When I finally got to the top, I was dead.

On the last day that we were there we went to Olympic park and looked around for a few minutes. Not a whole lot to see but the bobsled track was interesting as was the summer jump for the freestyle skiers. All in all it was a fun weekend.

I should publicly thank the Block Foundation for their funding of the trip.