Finding a Mortgage Broker

So, I recently moved to Washington State from the East Coast. Before coming out here, I was in the process of buying a house. Well, prices for places here are way more than North Carolina. A mortgage back in NC for $200,000 could get you 2000 sqft. easily. Here on the eastside (meaning east of Seattle) $200k gets you the basement of a 1950's rambler that hasn't seen renovation since the Nixon administration.

Problem I've had is finding not only a real estate agent, but a trustworthy mortgage broker. A friend from High School was my NC Real Estate Agent and I used her preferred broker. Out here I have to rely on word of mouth and internet sites for mortgage brokers.

Best practices for finding the right choice and narrowing the selection is how you search for the term. Just searching mortgage broker won't give you the best results. Also, if you live in a smaller city, choose a bigger city to help improve the results. I think there are only a handful of mom and pop brokers where I am, so I chose the closest big city for the search - Bellevue WA Mortgage Broker

Right now I am sorting through my choices of who to go with. It's important to get references and build choices off of referrals. I've heard too many stories of people getting screwed over by shady agents and brokers who were either dishonest, didn't know what they were doing, or were juggling too many clients.

Best Moments of World Cup 2006

Now that the USA is out of the World Cup officially (they were out before the tourney began!), I've compiled a list of the best moments of World Cup 2006. The World Cup is the largest sporting event in the world with dare I say billions of viewers. The World Cup unites the best of the best in soccer to compete for world domination, or at least domination of a soccer ball.

So, what is the best thing so far about World Cup 2006? The fans. No, not the hairy, toothless hooligans or the riot inducing knuckleheads. I'm talking about the ladies. Can't we just have a camera shot during the game that just focuses on all these chicks? Seriously, soccer is boring, but staring at a top heavy broad sporting a brazillian flag on her chest rocks. Maybe ESPN 8 "The Ocho" could broadcast this simultaneously during the games. Here's to you, ladies of World Cup 2006.
Brazil is a very beatiful country.

Das es Scharf (I forget how to spell it but I know what it means!)!
















Swedes kissing in celebration of the World Cup











I don't know anything about Argentina, but I think a visit is in order.














How come I don't see people like her jumping over the fence and sneaking over the border? Immigration reform would be a lot different!







I would have put up some America World Cup 2006 babes, but we don't care about soccer!

Dane Cook Child Mimic

I love Dane Cook, but not as much as this cat.

HBO Is Must See TV

So, the Sopranos season is over (for the year). It would be nice if I could sit here and say I'm upset there aren't any new episodes this year, but I can't. This season was horrible. I have no other way to explain it. From my point of view, it looked like this season was just a string of pointless, uninteresting, zero plot driven, refusal to close open-ended storylines, failure to develop new twist episodes. I already had a disgust for Sundays since I have to go to work on Monday, but the past 2 months I've been down right miserable.

Well thank god Sopranos is over and the real shows can start playing. Thanks to HBO On Demand, I have just finished the second season for both Deadwood and Entourage. Now, when Deadwood first came out I loved it, but since I didn't have HBO for a while, I missed out on the second season. Watching 3-4 episodes a night the past week I've realized that Deadwood is now the best show on HBO. Sopranos is now second, and third overall for all HBO series (Oz is #2 all time). Deadwood is an award winning drama about an outlaw camp during the western expansion of the US. This show is filled with cussing, murder, cussing, whores, cussing, deception, cussing, bribery, cussing, greed, and just a little bit of cussing. Needless to say, I love this show.

Entourage is a great show that revolves around an actor (fictious) and his day to day life in Hollywood. He is surrounded by his "entourage," including an older actor brother (Kevin Dillon), his best friend (and manager), and another friend, all from Queens, New York. This show is very similiar to another HBO hit of long ago, Arliss. Entourage is full of guest appearances from several actors and sports stars and does an excellent job of mixing real life with fiction. The best character has to be Ari, Vince's agent played by Jeremy Piven. Jeremy plays a great asshole, and his character really sells Hollywood and the industry. The writers do an amazing job of really selling the character of Vince and the others, making you feel like you are watching a behind the scenes "Truman Show."

There are some other shows on HBO that are just starting or I haven't had a chance to watch. The Wire is an undercover drama that is going into it's 4th season. Lucky Louie is a new sitcom written by and starring the sometimes humorous Louis C.K. Another show I'm looking forward to is Tourgasm, a behind the scenes look at a 30 day comedy tour featuring the best young comic out there today Dane Cook, as well as Jay Davis, Robert "Bobby" Kelly and Gary Gulman.

With all these shows appearing back to back to back to back to back on Sunday nights, my hitless streak on Sundays is going to end starting in 50 minutes. Maybe I'll actually be able to go into work Monday with a smile!

Worst Triple Crown In Years

I'm not the biggest horse race fan out there, but it seems to me that this is the worst Triple Crown in years. The kicker of it is that it started out as being possibly the best.

The Triple Crown ends today at Belmont Stakes, where both the winners from the other two races - Preakness and Kentucky Derby, are out. Barbaro, the winner of the Kentucky Derby, suffered a life threatening injury during the Preakness and is currently recovering. Preakness winner Bernadino won't be in today's race due to "exhaustion" and is saving for the Breeder's Cup Classic at Churchill Downs.

So, for the 3rd time in 36 years, the Belmont Stakes will be run without either the Kentucky Derby or Preakness Stakes winner. Talk about crappy. I think the whole reason non-horse owning people watch these races is to see one of these horses win the Triple Crown. I don't have any stats to back this up, but I'm going to say that the Belmont Stakes has the worst ratings of all three events. That being said, I'm sure it will have better ratings than the Stanley Cup finals. Even though my beloved Carolina Hurricanes are destined for glory, they compete in a sport than has no tv viewership outside of New York and Canada. I heard they lost in the ratings to women's softball the other day. How sad is that?

Good luck to all the horses today, if I'm around the TV I might switch in time to see some rich arabian cheer for what his $70 a barrel oil hording ass can buy.