Monday, August 16, 2004

This past week has been a complete blur of work.

The customer came in to audit our documents. This translated to half a dozen folks sitting in front of computers in a conference room, electronically reviewing documents and writing up “Formal Action Items” if they found anything wrong. A Form Action Item is essentially a description of a problem that needs to be resolved before the customer will accept the documents.

Unfortunately, the customer was there from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., and I had to be there at the same time. Because of my late-night sleep patterns, this wrought havoc on my body. I was exhausted all morning, and by the afternoon I’d been forcing my body for so long that I never felt 100%.

So, it was a tiring week. But the customers only wrote twenty Action Items, all of them minor, and they seemed content with the documents. It’s always a bit hard to tell, as they’re reluctant to praise.

On another positive note, despite my tiredness, I still completed over half of the items on my weekly to-do list. And some of the completed items were fairly time-intensive, like watching a Great Movie and assembling a new BeOS machine to replace the one that died.

This is on top of a week that included the roller coaster ride of my mortgage. First, the underwriters wanted very specific documentation about a line of credit that I have with my Mom and Grandmother, and it took several phone calls to various people to satisfy that requirement. Then, the underwriters wouldn’t approve me for a loan with no down payment; they insisted on 5% down. But I don’t have that kind of money on hand, so I had to arrange a quick loan from my parents.

Just to make sure I understood everything properly, I called my loan officer on Friday. She told me that I’d need to bring to closing the down payment ($10,000) plus $3,000 for closing costs (taxes, title insurance, fees). On Saturday, I received the estimates in the mail, and according to them I needed to bring the down payment plus $6,000. A worried call to my loan officer this morning revealed the situation: the mailed estimates were the first estimates we’d done on the property, and to be safe the loan officer had written in the highest possible amounts. We now have much more accurate estimates, which are indeed $3,000. Whew.

This whole mortgage issue has been quite a headache, actually. If nothing else, I’m annoyed at the number of hoops I’ve had to jump through and the confusing terms used to describe the money I need to pay. If a firm were to provide the same service in a package that eliminated all the jargon, I imagine they’d have a lot of happy customers.

Anyvay, I still have quite a bit to take care of: I called an insurance place to get some homeowner’s insurance, and they’re setting up a policy for me now. I need to call about buying a parking sticker. I still need to withdraw the cashier’s check for closing on Wednesday. And I haven’t even bought the place yet.

I look forward to the day when I’m at least somewhat familiar with this process.

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