Actually, this is a harder to answer question than it looks like.
I do a bunch of different things. My official title, which describes my level, not the things I do, is Clerk Specialist 3. When I asked what that means, one of my co-workers laughed and said, "It means you're EVERYBODY's slave." But then she clarified, and said it means that there are many different people who will be giving me things to do for them.
MGIC: Um. It is a mortgage insurer. MGIC describes itself "As the nation's leading private mortgage insurance (MI) company, MGIC helps lenders put more families in homes with low-down-payment mortgages than any other insurer. We are not just the leaders, but the founders of an industry that has made homeownership possible for millions of families."
Here's how this works: say you want to buy a house. In order to get a mortgage, you used to have to have 20% of the home's value as a down payment. So say this house you want to buy has a price tag of $100,000, that means you would need $20,000 for your down payment. I dunno ‘bout YOU but that would take me a very long time to save up for, so long that I ought to have been saving for a long time already if I'm ever going to do that.
The reason mortgage lenders required a substantial down payment was to make it less likely you would just walk away from your mortgage… decide you couldn’t afford it and stop paying. Aside from things like what it would do to your credit rating, you’d be walking away from $20,000; good incentive to try to make it work.
Here you are with that $100,000 house to buy. The lender will allow you to put down three to five thousand dollars, or sometimes less, BUT you have to get mortgage insurance. Mortgage insurance will pay back the lender if you default, so they’re willing to loan you the money with less investment from you.
What I do: Um again… so far my job has been pretty varied. Some things are very clerical, like taking info from one database/spreadsheet/whatever and inputting it into another. Some things are really interesting – I did a bunch of research in a great big set of loan files to see if I could uncover and document sufficient proof of fraud so that MGIC could go after them about it. That was cool and apparently the legal department bigwigs were impressed. :o) My department (Quality Control) audits the work of MGIC employees who work in the lender’s offices; I am the one who deals with the logistics of the audits, things like making sure the files will either be sent to our office or be collected at the office where the auditors will be, hire a temp if necessary, ship laptops and stuff to the location and make sure it all gets back…
It's pretty interesting and there is lots of room to learn and move up. There may be more fraud investigation which was right up my alley. :o)
I'm sure I'll write more on this as time goes by - I do so many different things in a day that it's hard to think of them all when I'm sitting here at home. I'm not likely to get bored anytime soon! :o)
I'm very pleased. This feels like a place where I could stay for a long time. I'm hoping...
We got our eyes checked. The good news is our eyes are healthy. Paul got glasses as a back-up to his contacts. I hadn't had an eye exam for several years - I need new lenses since it seems I now have astigmatism and I need bifocals. And apparently my tears evaporate too quickly (due to rosacea) so my eyes dry out, so they tear more... which means I end up with dry eyes and a wet face. Stupid. Easily fixed though... I have to try to blink more often. Humph.
MGIC offered me a permanent position and I accepted.
Hugs all around, folks...
My back is beginning to feel better. the massage is helping a lot and Paul rubs liniment-type-stuff on it... it's the local equivalent of what I am used to from home. I have been a long-time user of A535, which is not available in the United States. The best I can get here is pretty mild but it still feels good.
Fighting is going slowly and I'm *really* frustrated with the pell. I think I just really need to armour up and go play, but it seems that every practice I plan to attend gets cancelled due to weather; it's raining or it's too cold or whatever. So. I really want to try to find us an indoor site. I'm sick of this.
Work is going ok. They asked me if I am interested in hiring on permanently and I said I might be, depending on what they are offering. My manager asked for a copy of my resume and will be getting back to me. For now, I'm assuming I'm still just finishing out the three-month temp assignment.
For relaxation, we have been trying to catch two weekly TV shows; "Kojak" and "House". It's been so long since I watched a TV show regularly. I like it more for the time it gives me with Paul than anything else.
Sometimes I think we're just really trying to 'get over' our difficult start and settle in to being a normal family.
Those sore spots I was talking about before are really cranky now. I mean, it is really hard to find a way to sit at work that doesn't aggravate it. I've seen a device that allows you to work trigger points in your own back, and I think I will try to track one down.
Monday: massage therapy is a Very Good Thing. It’s to “fix” (ie reduce the pain and stiffness from) some old stuff that is coming back to haunt me… mainly from two things.
Thing One is the car accident I was in, several years ago (I was rear-ended at a stop sign by a guy going about 65-70 miles [not km] per hour). Nothing was broken, but the muscles in the right side of my neck and shoulder/back were really torn up. I had about a year of chiropractic and various physical therapies after that. One very cool but unintended result was that my eyesight improved. Lots. I credit the craniosacral therapy with that one.
Thing Two is the shoulder surgery I had even longer ago than that. It left a lot of thick scar tissue on the front of my shoulder, which, as times goes by, contracts, and has to be manually stretched back out again. Yes, I stretch my shoulder daily. No, it’s not enough: too much scarring. So basically I have to periodically get it seen to… and if I leave it too long between ‘periodicallies’, I end up like this – in pain and with reduced range of motion. *shrugs* It comes back. Thus, Massage therapy is a Very Good Thing.
Tuesday: Sewing night at the Wanats. Kymm is working on a project, and when she asked for help I failed to say no. :o) So tonight I think I will be weaving lucet cord rather than sewing Paul’s gambeson, or my veil, filet and barbette.
Wednesday: Haircuts at Jackie’s, which means a trip to Chicago. It’s nearly grey enough for me to stop colouring it. Freaky.
Thursday: fight practice at Leif’s. Ready set, just *try* to hit me with a stick, I dare you!
Friday: Concert! Joe Jackson (and Todd Rundgren) at the Pabst Theatre. You can see a clip of Joe Jackson and Bill Shatner from a TV show, doing Shatner’s ‘song’ “Common People” if you scroll all the way down the main Pabst website. The link is on the bottom right. Enjoy!
Back to work...
If you are a fan of the Hitchhiker’s Guide books, you ought to see the movie on the big screen. More on this later, I don't want to spoil anything for anyone.
Moving? We found an apartment complex (walking distance from Ben’s high school) that has some really nice townhouses with lots of storage space (we could ditch the storage locker!), but we’re probably not moving yet. When we took at look at our current lease, we noticed that its dated until the end of December 2005, even though we told them we only wanted to sign till the end of June. Our fault totally for signing it without catching the mistake, and so unless we can negotiate our way out of it, we’re going to stay put for now. The penalty for breaking our lease is an extra month’s rent, which is not going to happen.
Smile! So Paul and I are heading off to the dentist this month at long last, ew. Paul goes this week, then I go two weeks later. Have I mentioned I *dread* the dentist? Nastiness. Evil, icky, nastiness.
Fud. Our second week of menu-ing etc is going ok. There are no spectacular failures or successes to report. I think that’s probably a good thing. :o) Ben is using a kids cook book called “There’s a Chef in My Soup” by Emeril Lagasse, and he seems pretty hyped about it.
Fight fight: Ben was *not* hyped about SCA fighting anymore – at 14, he moves into an older age class, with more substantial armour requirements than before because of the increased power of the shots being struck, and significantly bigger, stronger opponents. He may be 14, but he still only weighs 85 to 90 pounds. We haven’t tried to pressure him back into fighting, but we did demand that he find *something* SCA-related to do at events. He’s currently looking into shoe-making and casting. I’m all for the shoe-making, since it’s not poisonous, or going to burn him, or likely to set anything on fire. He’s interested in learning to brew root-beer as well, but I don’t know how feasible or expensive that’d be, and it doesn’t meet our requirement of being able to occupy him actually *at* an event.
Cats: The cats seem to be ok with being shorn; well ok, Sif less so than Hope. Sif doesn’t like the way it feels, I think, because she grooms her back really vigourously, and more often than she needs to. I will post pics, and we may not do it again. The groomer has another anti-allergy service they offer, a special type of bath (*that* should be popular!) that takes out about 6 to 8 weeks worth of shedding. We’ll see.