Jon Kunze’s Blog

A Busy Week

Last week was filled with activity! I looked at a few more houses, and actually ended up submitting an offer on a house yesterday. An hour later, I got a counter offer, and then submitted my counter, and here we are. The ball is in the owner’s court now. If I get a chance, I’ll post up a picture of the house I’m bidding on. I’m trying not to get too excited about it, since there is no guarantee that the owner will sell it at what I’m willing to pay, but I am hopeful, as I really like it. I’m hoping to hear back from my Realtor this morning. I’ve learned so much about the home buying process that I never knew. It’s really an enlightening experience.

Last night was also the long awaited Season 6 Premier of The Sopranos. It was a very good episode, filled with lots of Death and many new stories starting to unfold. I was worth the wait; even though the wait seemed to be forever (it was actually over a year and a half!).

Afterwards, was the Series Premier of Big Love. My friend Danny seems to think that this show’s intent might be to demean the beliefs of the Mormon Religion, and make people think they the religion still condones Polygamy. I, however, feel that people are educated enough to know that the religion does not condone this behavior (any more), and use this as more of a joke, much in the same way that no one believes that all Catholic Priests are pedophiles.

The show I thought shows a lot of promise. It really started to highlight the difficulties of trying to keep three wives happy. While it may be based loosely on a small sect of rebel Mormon believers, I don’t believe that it is meant to be prejudicial or discriminatory toward them. It merely highlights a different way of life.

Besides, there was a whole hullabaloo when Passions of the Christ came out, and the Jewish community has finally quieted down about that, so I don’t see the big problem. And for the record, I counted only two real references to the Mormon Religion in the movie. One was when a young girl in the family was talking to another girl about Young Women’s and such activities, which were in no way defamatory. The other was when Bill and one of his wives were talking about the neighbor’s house being sold, and jokingly saying that maybe a “Big Bad Mormon Bishop” was going to move into the house and try to force them out of the neighborhood. That clearly drew a line between the Mormon Religion, and what this family practices. At the end of the show, they also issued the following statement:

“According to a joint report issued by the Utah and Arizona attorney general’s offices, July 2005, ‘approximately 20,000 to 40,000 or more people currently practice polygamy in the United States.’ The Mormon Church officially banned the practice of polygamy in 1890.”

I for one will be following this show, as it seems to be good entertainment, and right now, there is a real shortage of it on cable.

And finally, a small snippet of the wikipedia article about Big Love.

HBO has taken pains to state that the family portrayed in the series is not part of the Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the largest group of the Latter-day Saint Movement associated with the term Mormon. The writers portray the family’s religion as a fundamentalist splinter group that actually keeps their lifestyle secret from their LDS or Mormon neighbors (the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints banned the practice of polygamy in 1890).

Maybe that will help reduce the uneasy feelings that many member’s of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are feeling.

An Update on House Hunting

Well, I’ve now looked at 11 houses in the past two days. Of those, there’s probably 3 I have any interest in. Some were just God awful, especially with how much people wanted for them.

I also met with a bank yesterday, and got approved for the home loan. I’m now working on a few other things to get my interest rate lower, and hopefully I’ll have all the work done in the next week or so.

As a side note, I’ve also been uploading a bunch of pictures to my flickr account, so be sure to check them out!

A Tribute to the Worst Weekday, Monday!

Man Mondays are a drag. It’s so hard to get back into the groove when you’ve done absolutely no work all weekend.

On another note, I contacted a Realtor today, and I’m going to start looking at houses soon. I’m also in the process of contacting banks to find out what their current rates are and if I can get a pre-approval. I guess that even though the Honda Credit Union has great rates on car loans, their home loans are a little higher than most. Therefore, I’m contacting a few local banks to see what they can do for a first time home buyer. Hopefully, this ball will be rolling full speed soon!

For those of you out there, enjoy your Monday, as it won’t be back for 7 more day!

A Tribute to my Favorite Weekday, FRIDAY!

Friday’s are so nice. Basically, you go to work and sit like a zombie for 8 hours, and then head home to enjoy the weekend, and that I like.

Ok, so maybe I won’t be able to sit like a zombie all day, but I don’t plan on having the most productive day either. Basically, I’ve got a few trivial meetings, as well as some small things to do, but that’s about it. Then, BRING ON THE WEEKEND.

On another note, I’ve planned a get together for some co-workers at Benny’s in a few weeks, and so far, I’m getting quite a positive response, atleast a lot more than I thought I would. It should be a fun time though, since one of our co-workers is performing at Benny’s that night.

In other news, I’m almost done posting my pictures to my Flickr Account. All I’m waiting on is for Danny to get me some of the pictures he has from my Graduation and a few parties, and then I’ll be all set.

The new camera is great by the way. I would definately recommend it for anyone looking to taking some great digital pictures, especially if you want to be able to take action shots. My old camera was so bad at action shots since the shutter lag was so bad, but not this one!

And finally, one more note about photos. I had some pictures printed from my Flickr account, and it has led me to the conclusion that I will never use another film based camera again. The pictures were printed at 4″x6″ on glossy paper. It was great being able to order them, and then pick them up at Target an hour later. And the price couldn’t be beat. Basically, for 44 pictures, it was $7.00. Not only that, but something screwed up with their machine, so I got free duplicates as well. I would definately suggest giving online digital developing a shot.

That’s all for now, maybe another post sooner than expected.