I haven't gotten to the short sale part of my financial memoir yet, but I plan to detail the horrendous paperwork process with my mortgage company. While doing research, I discovered that AwayGo Financial (its nom de plume until I figure out what will get me sued and what won't) has declared bankruptcy. Ha! I'm surprised it took so long.
Actually, as traumatic as the short sale process was for me, it actually was a lot better than most experienced with AwayGo. I'm guessing it's because it was clear we couldn't keep the house, we were current on payments (despite pressure to default) and it was a relatively small amount.
This news is yet another reason to include an epilogue in this memoir detailing not only what happened to the Killer Robot Family, but to the the other characters and companies in this saga. It will take a page just to list the bankruptcies. I'm just grateful we weren't one of them.
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
The Perils of Consumerist.com
So apparently I'll be unable to read any mortgage related posts on Consumerist.com while writing this memoir, because I'm sure that the site's take-no-prisoners community will make short work of this book if it ever gets published.
In this post, a young couple moved into their first house a few years ago. Then the husband lost his job and they couldn't make the mortgage payments. They asked their lender PNC Mortgage for help, and we all know how that goes.
They moved out of the house, sold their Pottery Barn and Crate&Barrel furniture, and moved into an apartment with some IKEA furniture. They still pay the HOA fees and are trying to negotiate a short sale. PNC is being awful and now calling their relatives about the missed payments. Now there's a short sale under review and the bank's locked them out.
It just seems like PNC has made a bad situation unnecessarily horrible. They're obviously doing their best, though, so why is the Consumerist community piling onto them and treating them like whiny ax murderers? The reasons are legion:
1. They had Pottery Barn furniture.
2. They had Crate and Barrel furniture
3. They signed a mortgage, so tough titties.
4. They didn't have enough savings -- obviously because of the Pottery Barn and Crate&Barrel furniture.
5. They bought IKEA furniture.
So I've decided not to read Consumerist posts about mortgages for a while because there's no way I can write this memoir with visions of the Consumerist hive screaming for my blood. But this does remind me to keep the "poor little me" attitude out of my writing. I must never forget that Mr. Killer Robot and I got ourselves into this situation. The recession just made it worse.
In this post, a young couple moved into their first house a few years ago. Then the husband lost his job and they couldn't make the mortgage payments. They asked their lender PNC Mortgage for help, and we all know how that goes.
They moved out of the house, sold their Pottery Barn and Crate&Barrel furniture, and moved into an apartment with some IKEA furniture. They still pay the HOA fees and are trying to negotiate a short sale. PNC is being awful and now calling their relatives about the missed payments. Now there's a short sale under review and the bank's locked them out.
It just seems like PNC has made a bad situation unnecessarily horrible. They're obviously doing their best, though, so why is the Consumerist community piling onto them and treating them like whiny ax murderers? The reasons are legion:
1. They had Pottery Barn furniture.
2. They had Crate and Barrel furniture
3. They signed a mortgage, so tough titties.
4. They didn't have enough savings -- obviously because of the Pottery Barn and Crate&Barrel furniture.
5. They bought IKEA furniture.
So I've decided not to read Consumerist posts about mortgages for a while because there's no way I can write this memoir with visions of the Consumerist hive screaming for my blood. But this does remind me to keep the "poor little me" attitude out of my writing. I must never forget that Mr. Killer Robot and I got ourselves into this situation. The recession just made it worse.
Hold the Irony
From First World Problems:
"This screenplay I wrote is so far past post-ironic that it's actually approaching ironic again from the other direction."
April 21, 2012
Monday, May 7, 2012
The Stink of Failure
Writing prompt: Describe a smell that evokes a particular place.
Burned Popcorn
Whenever I smell burned popcorn I think of the first hair salon I visited after moving to Ann Arbor, Mich. Seeking a new hairstylist is always a traumatic experience and after moving from Detroit to Kalamazoo to Prague to San Francisco and now to Ann Arbor, you'd think I'd have a better grip on the process.
I'd read all the magazine tips for finding the perfect stylist — not that I needed the perfect stylist, I just wanted someone who could play up my hair's natural blonde as opposed to its natural gray. The gray had established a beachhead at the crown a few years before and now threatened total conquest and I needed a stylist who could help me fight the good fight.
So I read the magazine tips and they were predictable: ask your friends, ask women on the street with good hair, interview candidates. I found such suggestions ridiculous; I had exactly one friend in Ann Arbor at this point and she had terrible hair.
As for the second suggestion, well, that created a fascinating social experiment. Seriously, I think UC Berkeley researchers should take this up. I found the most friendly-looking women, those most likely to cheerfully respond to my request, had the worst-looking hair, while the beautifully coiffed ladies strolling down State Street looked ready to smack anyone foolish enough to address them.
So I adopted the time-honored tactic of walking down Main Street and picking the salon with the nicest sign. They brought me in and introduced me to Stephanie, a cheerful, heavyset stylist with a nose ring and a henna rinse. All was well until the faint odor of burned popcorn entered the room. Stephanie froze.
"What's that?" she asked.
"I think it's burned popcorn," I piped up, ever the helpful one, although it was obvious what the odor was.
"The new girl did it," whispered the neighboring stylist.
"The eyebrow girl?" Stephanie asked. A quick, grim nod.
"I don't understand that," Stephanie said, dabbing some potion on a lock of my hair. "You have to stand by the microwave while it pops."
"Everybody knows that," said the other stylist.
The smell grew stronger and the culprit, a young Asian girl, scampered out to apologize, but the stylists were having none of it. "You have to stand by the microwave," Stephanie said. The eyebrow girl looked ready to cry.
And that's why, although Stephanie created the perfect soft buttermilk highlights for my hair, I never returned to that salon.
Burned PopcornWhenever I smell burned popcorn I think of the first hair salon I visited after moving to Ann Arbor, Mich. Seeking a new hairstylist is always a traumatic experience and after moving from Detroit to Kalamazoo to Prague to San Francisco and now to Ann Arbor, you'd think I'd have a better grip on the process.
I'd read all the magazine tips for finding the perfect stylist — not that I needed the perfect stylist, I just wanted someone who could play up my hair's natural blonde as opposed to its natural gray. The gray had established a beachhead at the crown a few years before and now threatened total conquest and I needed a stylist who could help me fight the good fight.
So I read the magazine tips and they were predictable: ask your friends, ask women on the street with good hair, interview candidates. I found such suggestions ridiculous; I had exactly one friend in Ann Arbor at this point and she had terrible hair.
As for the second suggestion, well, that created a fascinating social experiment. Seriously, I think UC Berkeley researchers should take this up. I found the most friendly-looking women, those most likely to cheerfully respond to my request, had the worst-looking hair, while the beautifully coiffed ladies strolling down State Street looked ready to smack anyone foolish enough to address them.
So I adopted the time-honored tactic of walking down Main Street and picking the salon with the nicest sign. They brought me in and introduced me to Stephanie, a cheerful, heavyset stylist with a nose ring and a henna rinse. All was well until the faint odor of burned popcorn entered the room. Stephanie froze.
"What's that?" she asked.
"I think it's burned popcorn," I piped up, ever the helpful one, although it was obvious what the odor was.
"The new girl did it," whispered the neighboring stylist.
"The eyebrow girl?" Stephanie asked. A quick, grim nod.
"I don't understand that," Stephanie said, dabbing some potion on a lock of my hair. "You have to stand by the microwave while it pops."
"Everybody knows that," said the other stylist.
The smell grew stronger and the culprit, a young Asian girl, scampered out to apologize, but the stylists were having none of it. "You have to stand by the microwave," Stephanie said. The eyebrow girl looked ready to cry.
And that's why, although Stephanie created the perfect soft buttermilk highlights for my hair, I never returned to that salon.
Doofus Analyst
Don't you love it when your opinion is validated by an unexpected source?
I've spent the last two days writing down key economic events from March 2007 to March 2008 in a little notebook, including expert quotes. Some of the best quotes came from Mark Zandi, who said:
July 2007: (Market at all-time high, nudging toward 14,000 mark) Zandi says fundamentals are OK. "What's driven the marked in the last few days, couple weeks, is the relief that the economy is going to be able to digest the housing downturn and the mortgage-market mess without falling into recession. I think there was a lot of concern about that."
Well, thank heavens ... what a relief!
Of course, Zandi works for Moody's, which said in August 2007 that a "limited contraction" of the economy could be beneficial because it could moderate consumer spending and keep a lid on inflation.
Zandi also loved Bush's lame little effort to help the situation in December 2007, freezing rates for 10-15 percent of the ARMs (adjustable rate mortgages) set to reset to a higher interest rate.
So I googled Zandi to see if he'd been fired yet, and no, he's still the go-to pundit for journalists covering the economy. But I did get some small validation from an article at RealClearMarkets, a site that aggregates market news. In June 2011, they posted this article titled "Mark Zandi: Always Quoted, Often Wrong, Never in Doubt."
Ha!
I've spent the last two days writing down key economic events from March 2007 to March 2008 in a little notebook, including expert quotes. Some of the best quotes came from Mark Zandi, who said:
July 2007: (Market at all-time high, nudging toward 14,000 mark) Zandi says fundamentals are OK. "What's driven the marked in the last few days, couple weeks, is the relief that the economy is going to be able to digest the housing downturn and the mortgage-market mess without falling into recession. I think there was a lot of concern about that."
Well, thank heavens ... what a relief!
Of course, Zandi works for Moody's, which said in August 2007 that a "limited contraction" of the economy could be beneficial because it could moderate consumer spending and keep a lid on inflation.
Zandi also loved Bush's lame little effort to help the situation in December 2007, freezing rates for 10-15 percent of the ARMs (adjustable rate mortgages) set to reset to a higher interest rate.
So I googled Zandi to see if he'd been fired yet, and no, he's still the go-to pundit for journalists covering the economy. But I did get some small validation from an article at RealClearMarkets, a site that aggregates market news. In June 2011, they posted this article titled "Mark Zandi: Always Quoted, Often Wrong, Never in Doubt."
Ha!
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Making Lemons
Here's another writing prompt, a rare example of me writing in the present tense.
The prompt: Write some dialogue of two characters arguing about something trivial, but they're really arguing about something unspoken.
First Day
"Ooh, is that candy?" I ask Tessie as I pass her desk.
"No, scorpions," she says shortly, not looking up from her computer.
"May I have some?" I ask.
Tessie nods slightly as she attacks her keyboard.
"Do you always set out candy?" I ask. It's my first day, after all, and a candy dish can say a lot about a company's culture.
I'm having a hard time understanding Marden Inc.'s culture: People seem silent and standoffish, yet there was a Happy Hour every Thursday and an office lunch the third Tuesday of the month. Do they save all their chit-chat for those times?
Apparently so, since Tessie has not yet answered my question about the candy. Should I ask it again? Should I take a piece and slink away? Should I take the smallest piece? As the newest employee maybe I should take the smallest piece. Oh wait, they're all the same size. Okay then. I carefully dip my hand into the bowl (taking care to touch only one — it wouldn't do to look choosy).
"I knew you'd take the lemon one," Tessie says, still tapping away.
"Why?"
"Because it's the one I wanted."
I hold it out. "You can have it."
A long sigh. "No, apparently I was not meant to have it. You were meant to have it."
"Maybe the others are just as good," I say.
A malevolent look. "We'll never know. I will only accept a lemon one. No that this matters to anyone. I made it perfectly clear to people that I wanted the lemon one and they chose to disregard that and so here I am, stuck with my old blueberry candy, while you get the lemon one." Another malevolent look.
I was confused. Were we talking about candy?
The prompt: Write some dialogue of two characters arguing about something trivial, but they're really arguing about something unspoken.
First Day
"Ooh, is that candy?" I ask Tessie as I pass her desk.
"No, scorpions," she says shortly, not looking up from her computer.
"May I have some?" I ask.
Tessie nods slightly as she attacks her keyboard.
"Do you always set out candy?" I ask. It's my first day, after all, and a candy dish can say a lot about a company's culture.
I'm having a hard time understanding Marden Inc.'s culture: People seem silent and standoffish, yet there was a Happy Hour every Thursday and an office lunch the third Tuesday of the month. Do they save all their chit-chat for those times?
Apparently so, since Tessie has not yet answered my question about the candy. Should I ask it again? Should I take a piece and slink away? Should I take the smallest piece? As the newest employee maybe I should take the smallest piece. Oh wait, they're all the same size. Okay then. I carefully dip my hand into the bowl (taking care to touch only one — it wouldn't do to look choosy).
"I knew you'd take the lemon one," Tessie says, still tapping away.
"Why?"
"Because it's the one I wanted."
I hold it out. "You can have it."
A long sigh. "No, apparently I was not meant to have it. You were meant to have it."
"Maybe the others are just as good," I say.
A malevolent look. "We'll never know. I will only accept a lemon one. No that this matters to anyone. I made it perfectly clear to people that I wanted the lemon one and they chose to disregard that and so here I am, stuck with my old blueberry candy, while you get the lemon one." Another malevolent look.
I was confused. Were we talking about candy?
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