Ode to Diana

I was a junior in high school when my mother told us she was pregnant again. I had, at the time, four sisters and a brother (I'm the eldest), and that was more family than anyone in my high school class had. It was a little odd. Nobody else in my circle of friends could really remember very well the last time their own mother had been pregnant. And there were some mixed feelings, even in the family.

Maybe Mom knew the sex of the child - this was back when it was much easier not to know - but if she did, she never told. It was a girl - #5, last of seven siblings. On September 25, Diana was born. I was 17. Before her first birthday, I was at BYU. Before her second birthday, I was in Hungary. I got married when she was 5. How much relationship can you have with someone that you've seen for less than three months - over a period of four years - since she learned to talk?

But Diana and I had something a little different. When I was gone for two years to Eastern Europe, my folks would point to my picture and ask Diana, "who is this?" and she'd say, "Kwis". Then she'd say, "Kwis play ball?" (I did play a lot of basketball). I spent a lot of time with her when I was home, and we just got on well together. There was something about her.

It wasn't just that she was cute - though she definitely was - but she had a way of lifting my spirits that was different from any of my other siblings. When Jeanette and I were back in D.C. doing an internship the first year we were married, I ate breakfast with her a lot. It was a great way to start the day. She always spent time with older people, which was natural, considering that all her sisters were much older than she. She had her fights and her problems with my brothers and sisters; she wasn't perfect. But we never had any, because I wasn't there. We never fought. The minutes we had, we cherished.

She grew up in Virginia, and Jeanette and I raised our faily in Utah. We saw each other rarely until Mom and Dad moved the family to Utah in 2002. Diana was, to put it mildly, not happy about it. She wasn't the same as other teenagers, and she knew it. She never just "dated", she told me. Her brothers and sisters were all married. She wanted to be married, too. She was always a little older than her peers. I loved spending time with her here. We had her in our home for Christmas morning, the most wonderful time of the year. Alexander, our oldest, is just seven years younger than Diana, and he's never had a big sister. He loved it. All our kids loved it. She was wonderful.

Diana worked for me for a few months when I was just getting started in the mortgage business. She was my secret weapon. She types a mile a minute, faster than anyone I ever saw. I'd make calls during the day, then she'd come home from school and come over to the office in Draper and put all the information into the computer, print out the package and get it our FedEx. She made friends immediately, all of them much older than she was, but she was always doing that. She's one of the friendliest people on earth. By the second month of our working together, I was #1 in the company. I was never out of the top 2 any month after that. Diana wasn't the only reason, but she was a big reason.

A couple of years later she met Ben Edgell. I have to ask Ben's forgiveness, because I was a little cool toward him when Diana introduced him. Two reasons for this, one of them totally irrational: 1) nobody was ever going to be good enough for my littlest sister, and 2) he was a Virginian and bent on remaining so. That meant no more sleepovers with our kids, no more having Diana type up my stuff. Back to seeing her once a year or so. I hated the thought of it.

But Ben was the right man, and he's proved it. There are great depths in him. He loves my sister more than I do, and I didn't think that was possible. I'm grateful to him for the care he takes of her. I'm proud that he's my brother. And if we don't see each other very often any more, the time we do have is good, and I'll take it.

A couple weeks ago my sisters Melanie and Elizabeth (and my sister Catherine's husband Scott) ran with me in a 5k in Draper. I called Diana when we were done and told her I wished she'd been able to run with us. We don't talk a lot, but we do talk, here and there, when it's important. We keep the connection. We'll always have it.

Life has a way of going on merrily whether we like it or not. This year, my littlest sister turned 21, and I didn't call her on her birthday. I don't think I've missed calling on her birthday in many, many years. I'm sorry, D. I won't miss again. Please don't think it wasn't important, that you're not important. You are. This is my penance and my apology. Please forgive me.

Happy Birthday, little D. I love you, forever and ever.

Sometimes We Can't Blog, Sorry.

Stuff happens.

We were on the radio – internet radio at www.grapevineradio.com – last Friday for an hour being interviewed by the very intelligent and engaging Geoff Beckstrom. A copy of that interview will be available next week – or you can listen to it on Friday at 3pm by going to the link and clicking on “listen live”. That was really fun.

Bonds are under a little pressure right now simply because nobody can believe that they have gotten as high as they have. For a day, 5.75% was PAR on the 30-year fixed mortgage (that’s the lowest rate you can get before you have to pay extra to get it). We haven’t seen that in a year. Meanwhile the Fed continues to do nothing, which might be a good thing, but more and more emphasis is being placed on economic reports that are, quite candidly, not very good. This could mean a rate cut from the Fed before the end of the year, and I’m predicting that it will happen. When it does, we could get the middle 5%s back for fixed rates, something I really didn’t think we’d see for another 10 years.

The National Association of Realtors put out their year-over-year statistics for home sales and that featured a decline in the median price of a sold house for the first time in 10 years. Note: this means nothing whatever about the price of your house. It might be going up or down; the national statistics don’t tell you.

But the foregoing two paragraphs do mean a couple of things. One, if you’re waiting to buy a house, stop. Now is the time. Two, if you’ve got a variable rate, get off that wagon. Fixed rates are better than variables right now and that’s a situation that can’t continue forever. You need to take advantage. Call us at 787-2162 or email us and we’ll talk.

Philly Fed Spikes Bonds

Bonds have rallied enormously, punching through the 4.70 support level, after the Philadelphia Fed talked about the stalling economy. We're putting the Potty Post to bed right now, and I have an article in there about refinancing to lower rates, but that article might be a little soft now in light of what's happened today. If you're on an ARM, or your rate is 6.5 or higher you should call me. 801-310-3407.

This is Why I Blog

I was going to respond to this comment in the comments section, but since I doubt that anyone reads them much, and this was such a good comment, I wanted to deal with it here in the light. This is in response to the Super Bowl post of last week, where I asked about how to create an offseason in the business world.

Tod Hansmann said...

Well, personally speaking, my plan is to start a few simple startups, grow the ones that survive, expand on them quickly, and sell them to a bigger company. Take my 6.7 Million dollars and retire, taking the rest of my life to do amazing things one normally wouldn't get paid for (like teaching high school kids why they're bored all day).

There are other routes to the same, but they usually involve resources I don't have. I think in the end, though, you just need to arrange priorities. Everybody needs to do SOMEthing, and to be honest, I would prefer to be productive rather than what most sports players do in their off season lives. In that regard, I think you and I may have a slight advantage. Now if only our salaries compared.

By which I think he meant "if only our salaries compared to football players' salaries", and not "if only they compared to each other". In that case, I would point out just in passing (this is not why I reposted his comment) that our salaries dwarf the salaries of nearly everyone that plays football. There are some NFL guys that play that make more than we do, but almost nobody else does, even in the profesional ranks. There are lots of other football leagues and most of those guys don't make anything to speak of. But I digress.

I have a good friend who lives in Boston. He's a high-powered mergers and acquisitions attorney there, which means he's reached a level of his profession almost nobody gets to. He's worked very hard to get there, far harder than I have worked. This is expected, and in fact required. If you are going to make partner at one of the top firms in the country, you are going to arrive at work at 7 and go home, if you go home, also at 7 or possibly later. And you're going to do this every day, with the exception of Sundays. Some Sundays. Needless to say, this is very hard on families, so the bulk of these up-and-coming attorneys don't have any families to speak of.

My friend does. He has four children (might be 5, can't remember for sure), and a wife that loves him, and whom he loves. He holds down an extremely demanding job for his church. I don't know how he does it. He chalks it up to the Grace of God. That works for me. But he's put a lot of his own blood into that grace. He was the lead negotiator for the sale of the Boston Red Sox, and for the purchase of the Los Angeles Dodgers. He worked on the deal to get the Montreal Expos into Washington D.C. There have been some incredible successes. He takes almost no time off to celebrate them.

When he got to Boston, he had an interview with one of the partners at the firm, a man of the same faith my friend is. My friend asked this man if it were possible to do it all, to make partner, keep volunteering for the church - a thing that is far more extensive and time-consuming in his church than most careers are in the secular world - and have a family that grows together and learns to love one another. And this man said emphatically that yes, it was possible to do it all. But then he paused, thought for a moment, and said, "but I don't know anyone that has done it."

I tell this story by way of comment on what Tod mentioned above. I like the idea - I have had it myself - of starting several small companies, growing the best of them, selling them, and retiring. I read a lot of Inc. magazine because it tells these stories. But my experience is that 1) you can't stop once you start and 2) the number of small companies that make it at all is very small, so one might have to start a dozen of them to get one that survives and 3) the number that make it to $6.7 million is so tiny that one might have to start a hundred to get one that makes it that big. I also know that since it's impossible to tell just from the idea whether the company will make it, a tremendous amount of time and energy has to be invested in EACH company to give each a chance to make it big. And I know that for nearly everyone, there isn't that much time or energy. I've started three companies, and been involved in the start of four others. My current company threatens to drown me, but is surviving and improving as I improve. Only one of the other six is still around. It struggles mightily. These startups have consumed the last 20 years of my life. No retirement in sight. I do not believe myself to be atypical in this regard.

So I discover that I have to take the rest of my life to "do amazing things" right now. I don't have any other life. This is the only one I've got. My experience is that most of the amazing things one does one gets no pay for. Certainly the loans where I have performed the largest number of miracles have paid the least to the bank account. I do not get paid for working for either Chamber of Commerce, or for the political party I volunteer at, or for the church, or for the Rotary Club. I will not get paid to go to Master Gardener School (I got accepted! Hooray!). I do not get paid to hold my daughter's hand while she falls asleep. At least, I do not get money for these things. But offeasons are not created by money. All sports leagues have them. Virtually no sports leagues are paid leagues. There are thousands of champions crowned every fall in football and only one of them is the champ of the NFL.

Creating an offseason cannot mean sucking all the amazing things out of life in the now, for the hope that the future will bring...what? Tod talks about teaching school. School has an offseason. The offseason is not created by the massive salaries of the people that teach, and it certainly isn't created by the students, but they enjoy the offseason and look forward to the championship game more than the teachers do. There has to be something else, some other way. I don't want to stop playing the game. I just don't want to play it every day for 40 years, then try to stop like turning off a faucet. That's not going to work. It practically never works, despite the financial services ads on CNBC.

I know why Tod thinks this plan will work, and knowing him, he's probably correct that it will. But it doesn't meet my definition of an offseason. I'm looking for a way to play hard, win, and celebrate, taking some time before one has to go hit it again. Could be a long season, like the NBA. Could be short one, like college football. But it has to be a repeating - or repeatable - cycle. There has to be a way.

In Which We Win the Super Bowl

Haven't had ten seconds this week to blog, but that huge deal I wrote about last time has finally almost completely come to pass, and we have won the Super Bowl. The new season, of course, has already begun, so it's exactly the problem I posted about, to which I continue not to have a solution.

Right in the middle of the Super Bowl, though, there was another game going on that was just as critical to the clients playing in it, and I need to hand out an award or two. So. To everyone on the funding line at 1st National Lending, thank you. You came through in fine style when the chips were down. Ray, as always, carried the ball in crunch time. It is impossible to overstate the quality of his performance every loan, every day. Jared over at Jim Duncan Realty went above and beyond the call of duty several times for me, rare enough in any service provider, but all but unheard of in a Realtor. Thank you.

My top award, though, goes to Charity Title, which performed a miracle of small but oh, so important magnitude in transferring the cash literally in the final seconds to win the game. Connie, I don't know your last name, but you are my Favorite Person on Earth Aside from Those Related to Me. God bless you.

I could go on. There are some negative awards to hand out as well, including a huge raspberry to Definitive Appraisal for botching every single part of the loan process assigned to them. But on the whole, I'm happy and the client is happy. Can't ask for better than that.

But Tomorrow is a Monday Morning

The crowd roars, the team exults and the banner proclaims “we are the champions!”

What scene are we describing here? Wall Street? The mortgage closing table? The local florist after a big order?

Of course not. This is a sports scene. You knew this immediately. Of course, all of the other possibilities I mentioned are much more important in the grand scheme of things than whether a group of 11 guys managed to score an extra touchdown than some other group of 11 guys. But the football season has something to it that regular daily business does not, that makes the celebration natural, even inevitable.

And you’re going to say, “of course. It has the Super Bowl,” but you’re only half right. It does, indeed have the Super Bowl. But the Super Bowl is just a game, except for one thing – it is followed by an 8-month stretch wherein the winner can say to the world “we are the best team in football.” In other words, what makes the Super Bowl the Super Bowl is the offseason.

Humans are set up to have an offseason. We all come originally out of farming stock, and farmers wrap things up in October. They don’t plant again until March or April. True, there’s lots to be done in the winter, but it’s different stuff and generally not as much work as the spring and summer. There’s a break, a natural time off. Enjoy the harvest. Job well done.

Now take your job. Does any of this sound familiar? No? Not to me, either. I consider that this week I will close five loans – by any measure a good week – and that three of them have taken longer than two months to get here. It will be a huge relief to get them off the table. One of them has taken almost two years. That one’s a killer, and it’s going to be done. Finished. I should be exultant and there should be cheering and a banner. Except, oh except.

What about the Kunzler deal? What about the Newmans? The Hadfields? The Hamptons? Etc. See, getting these loans done this week is very like the end of a long, tough season in which we will have emerged victorious. Problem is, there’s another game next week. The Super Bowl wouldn’t matter figs if it was only one game in a year-round season, would it? Yep, you’re the champions. This week. Next week, who knows?

Wouldn’t you like to have an offseason at your job? You get that huge contract taken care of, land that big deal, finish 8 months of perfect attendance, whatever it is. I don’t care if it’s setting a new record for sacking groceries. Wouldn’t you like to have your parade? Or, if like my father you pooh-pooh ceremonies, wouldn’t you at least like to take the winter (or the summer) off?

But we don’t do this. Our lives are not constructed this way, in connection with natural rhythms, even though we ourselves are, I believe. I think this is bad. By “bad”, I mean destructive of relationships, physical and emotional health, and spiritual peace. There is some evidence to support this conclusion, which if I were more industrious, or a researcher instead of a mortgage guy that happens to blog, I would look it up. But frankly, I don’t need to. I feel it. I bet you feel it, too. We feel the euphoria of winning that last game before the long offseason, and we feel the lack of any such thing in our lives. Witness the impossible popularity of sports, of video games, of fantasy sports, for crying out loud. People need this stuff.

So what do we do? Ah, here’s my problem. I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about it for years, and have no better solutions now than I did when I started. Do you know what to do about it? Am I just crazy?

9/11 and Miscellanea

At lunch today the Provo/Orem Pacesetters were discussing 9/11 and the events thereof. There was a general lament - which I joined - that it seems impossible for us to simply mourn and appreciate what we have without taking political jabs at one another - ala Keith Olbermann, who reall ought to stick to baseball, calling last night for Bush to be impeached. Apropos of that, I direct you to a political columnist, Peggy Noonan, who seems very able to put aside her personal predilections, and who wrote a terrific 9/11 column last week.

The 10-year bond had really strong auction demand today, so the price rose and the yield dropped to 4.76. I expect that to confirm the 30-year mortgage at 6.25%, though I do not expect it to stay there.

Congratulations to Eric and Karen Guess of Rabbit Ears Village, Colorado on the closing of their house.

More later. I have a doozy saved up.

Lest We Forget

I never got to go up into the Towers. But I drove (or rode) to work past the Pentagon every day for years. It's one reason I live in Nowhere, Utah now.

A couple of years ago I sang Mozart's Requiem in a nationwide day of mourning for those lost that terrible day. What can one do? Pray. And be thankful for what we have. Every single day.

We're Baaaaack!

Three-week vacation. Well, okay, only from blogging. We put almost 6000 minutes on the cell phones here last month, including 8 or 9 hours on the phone from Oregon. I have officially discovered that I can’t do everything, at least not all at the same time. It’s disturbing.

Markets are flat, the economy continues to perk along at a Goldilocks rate, not too hot, not too cold, and the bond markets have picked up a little in response, driving the 30-year rate back down to 6.375%. With a little finesse, 6.25% is available. That’s about a quarter point from a new refinance boom, so if the end of the year brings bad financial news, keep an eye on that, all ye that purchased last August to this March.

There are some large changes afoot here in the absence of any huge market news. We’re in the process of closing out a raft of loans the have dragged on for weeks – and one of them for almost two years now – and that allows us to focus a little on reorganizing the business further. Frankly, I just can’t do all the loan officering anymore. There needs to be a way for clients to get information about their loans without having to speak to me directly. It would be helpful if I didn’t have to be on the phone for half of my vacation. Stuff like that. We’ll be announcing some things in the middle of October, so stay tuned.

BYU and CSU won this weekend, so even though the Utes somehow managed to beat Northern Arizona, the weekend was good. Hope yours was as well.