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It's not hard to reach presidential candidate Ryan Shepard.

He doesn't have a media relations office or a slick-tongued press secretary.

Shepard, 40, is a bartender at Roc Brewing Co. in Rochester while also working towards a bachelor's degree in creative writing at nearby SUNY Brockport. He plans to enroll in a MFA writing program after he graduates.

He is also just as much a candidate for U.S. president as Ted Cruz, who was billed by many as the first and only candidate to file so far.

"I'm doing something," says Shepard, when asked about his campaign. "People can complain about the government all you want, but you see very few people actually doing something. A lot of those people don't even vote."

Cruz got 13,000 re-tweets when he announced on Twitter. Shepard shared a photo announcing his campaign on Facebook, and got eight likes.

Shepard became a U.S. presidential candidate just two days after Cruz did, according to the Federal Election Commission. More than 200 others across the country have also filed to run for the big chair. Cruz was actually 194th to file, according to FEC records.

Is it that easy for a normal guy to become an official presidential candidate?

"I wanna say 4 minutes," Shepard said, when asked how long it took him to apply.

All you have to do is fill out a one page form called the FEC Form 2. If you want to receive campaign contributions that will eventually total more than $5,000, you fill out one more form, the FEC Form 1. Then you're set.

The majority of candidates so far are men and either Republican or independent.

Some of the applications are obvious pranks — "Sydney's Voluptuous Buttocks" officially filed on March 3 — but others are very serious.

Marc Feldman is a Libertarian candidate who filed in January. While he isn't a household name, he's also not completely new to the campaign trail. Feldman ran for attorney general in his home state of Ohio in 2010, and garnered more than 100,000 votes.

Feldman said he wants to balance the United States budget on day one in office. He added that he isn't going to accept campaign donations of more than $5 apiece.

"I think that raising a billion dollars and spending a billion dollars to run a presidential campaign is wrong."

Despite big hopes, the chances of candidates like Feldman or Shepard making even the smallest splash are slim or worse. Financial and credibility deficits are just two challenges in a long list the candidates would have to overcome said Tyler Johnson, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Oklahoma.

"Who knows how they're going to even get people to work for them, to go out into the field and spread their gospel," says Johnson. "They have so many deficits that I would say it's impossible for any of those individuals to have a serious shot."

That doesn't mean they won't try.

At least seven more people have filed to run since Shepard officially became a candidate on March 25.

2016 presidential election

2016 Presidential Race

Ted Cruz

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The pope's doctors are telling him to lay off pasta and get more exercise.

The Italian news agency ANSA is reporting that the 78-year-old pontiff's doctors told him to get more exercise and cut back his pasta intake to twice a week. But Pope Francis, who reportedly eats a plate of spaghetti every day, has not taken well to the suggestions; one doctor tells ANSA the pope is an "undisciplined" patient.

The ANSA report notes the pope has gained weight recently and suffers from sciatica, a lower-back problem.

Focus on Francis' health comes as he himself has said in interviews that he feels occasionally tired.

"Do you know how many times I think about this: The weariness which all of you experience?" Francis said during his Holy Thursday meditation. "I think about it and pray about it often, especially when I'm tired myself."

Those comments come after remarks he made in an interview last month with Mexican broadcaster Televisa.

"I have a sensation that my pontificate will be short: four or five years, or two or three," he said.

In that same interview, he also noted that he missed the relative anonymity he had as a bishop when he could go out and get pizza. Just days after that interview, the pope had his wish fulfilled. As The Associated Press reports: "Pizza maker Enzo Cacialli had a pie on hand as Francis drove by the Naples waterfront ... during his one-day visit to the city famous for its pizza."

And as you can see in the picture below, Francis was only happy to accept it.

La consegna della nostra pizza al Papa.... #pizza #papa #napoli #pizzaperilpapa #donernesto #pizzanapoletana #PapaFrancesco #lapizzeriadelpapa

A photo posted by La Pizzeria del Papa (@don.ernesto) on Mar 21, 2015 at 11:36am PDT

The Crux, the Boston Globe's website that covers Catholic issues, adds: "So far, the Vatican has not reacted to the report about the pope's doctors urging him to take better care of himself. In such cases, the Vatican typically takes the position that such matters pertain to the pope's private life and thus declines to release any comment."

But while the Vatican may be tight-lipped, New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who appeared on NBC's Today show, had some useful advice for the pope: "Get a new doctor."

Pope Francis

Vatican

Updated at 9:10 a.m. ET

The U.S. economy gained just 126,000 jobs in March, a figure well short of economists' expectations and the weakest growth since December 2013, the Labor Department reports. The unemployment rate held steady at 5.5 percent.

The consensus among economic forecasters had been for 245,000 new jobs, which would have continued a 200,000+ monthly streak that has been the longest such spurt of job growth since the early 1990s. Over the last year alone, the U.S. economy has added 3 million jobs.

Robust jobs numbers from January and February were also revised downward by 69,000 total, according to the monthly Employment Situation Survey.

The labor participation rate remained nearly unchanged.

Despite the tepid news, average monthly salaries for nonfarm payrolls in March were up slightly, 7 cents to $24.86. The average hourly earnings of private-sector and nonsupervisory employees rose by 4 cents to $20.86.

The latest report bucks a trend that the BLS says say an average of 269,000 new jobs per month in the previous 12 months. However, with today's revisions factored in, the average for the last three months has been 197,000.

The Associated Press notes: "Economic growth has been hammered this year by winter weather, factory slowdowns and lackluster construction activity. The manufacturing, construction and government sectors each shed workers, while hiring at restaurants plunged from February."

Wall Street will have a long weekend to ponder the meaning of the latest employment figures because markets are closed today for Good Friday. But, the apparent deceleration in hiring could cause the Federal Reserve to hold off on raising interest rates.

Economist John Canally of LPL Financial tells NPR's John Ydstie that "the Fed wants wants to see, or hopes to see, is that all this growth in the job market will eventually begin to push up wages. And then wages are a prerequisite to get any kind of inflation to stick. So until you get some wage inflation, you're not likely to get very much overall inflation in the economy."

Sectors that added jobs in March include professional and business services (40,000); retail trade (26,000) and health care (22,000).

U.S. economy

Jobs

Unemployment

President Richard Nixon and Pat Nixon welcome South Vietnam's President Nguyen Van Thieu and his wife Nguyen Thi Mai Anh to a working dinner at the San Clemente home on April 2, 1973. Charles Tasnadi/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Charles Tasnadi/AP

After owning the estate for 35 years, retired Allergan CEO Gavin S. Herbert is selling the former home of President Richard Nixon for $75 million.

The estate is large. Its main residence is 9,000 square feet and the entire compound boasts over 15,000 square feet of living space. The Wall Street Journal has details:

The tranquil lot overlooks a popular surfing beach. It has flower and vegetable gardens, neatly trimmed hedges, and palm and cypress trees.

The home is designed in a Spanish Colonial style—white stucco and red-tile roof, and living spaces around a central courtyard with a fountain. An outside staircase leads to an office with a fireplace that Mr. Nixon added. The dining room overlooks the home's ornamental and English gardens on the opposite side.

The Orange County Register lists all the spaces on the compound. They include "a pavilion with a grand main room, bar, guest suite and den, a two-bedroom guest house, pool and pool terrace, lighted tennis court, gazebo on the bluff, expansive lawns, vegetable and succulent gardens, a greenhouse, catering facility, four staff residences, security annexes and a private well for landscaping water."

Nixon bought the estate in 1969 for $1.4 million, just six months into his presidency, according to The Journal. He named it La Casa Pacifica. During his presidency, Nixon hosted his family as well as world leaders. After resigning from office in 1974 because of the Watergate scandal, Nixon retreated to the estate, where he wrote his memoir.

The OC Register notes that Herbert, along with partners, bought the estate from Nixon in 1980, after the former president moved to New York. The Wall Street Journal says Herbert's life-long love of gardening led him to volunteer as head gardener for the estate even before he owned it.

Gathered in the living room of the president's home at the Western White House in San Clemente on Jan. 6, 1971 are Richard Nixon and guests. From left to right are Bob Hope; Tricia Nixon; Pat Nixon; Gerald Ford, then minority leader of the House; Dolores Hope, Nixon; Betty Ford; Henry Kissinger; and Arnold Palmer. Anonymous/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Anonymous/AP