One Bad Friday, Twice a Victim of Mistaken Identity

Friday was a weird day. Of let's say four major transitions in my life at the moment, two errupted into chaos late on Friday afternoon and sent my pre-weekend buzz into the toilet.

First, and most gravely, I'd been expecting to close on a house next Friday. Yesterday my loan officer calls after days of radio silence, during which I had to prod her for information just to make sure things were going smoothly, to tell me that my loan approval is in jeopardy because the FHA thinks the place I'm buying is in a another building with a similar name. I assure that it is not the building in question, where several FHA loan applications have been deemed too risky, but another building a short distance away (hence the similar names). Oh, yeah. Well, now we've got to convince a federal agency of the difference in time to save this deal and its 4:45pm on Friday, so we're pretty much screwed until Monday. When discussing it later on, my father in law advised me to be careful that this isn't one of those obscure tricks that mortage people, car mechanics and others with esoteric knowledge use to fleece the layman out of more money. I'm leery, but hopeful.

Second, I'm applying to an evening program at Penn and just got my application finalized yesterday. No sooner had I gotten off the phone with my Loan Officer than the admissions office calls with a problem concerning my college transcript. Apparently I only earned an Associates Degree and that will be a problem. I assure them that I did indeed get a Bachelor's and that they can call Dartmouth if they need to verify this. For more background, I let them know that for reasons of tradition, Dartmouth lists their Bachelors' degrees as AB (artium baccalaureus) rather than BA and that this might be the source of confusion. Looking at a list of Associates Degrees now I can how this might happen and want to put the word up to anyone in the Registrar's Office at Dartmouth if they read this to be prepared for this kind of confusion. Just when I started to get testy, and thought of reminding her that Dartmouth doesn't even grant Associated Degrees, I stopped and tried to claw back some good will by being polite, because even though I'm right, they could still reject me for being an asshole.

But all in all, ARGH! What a one-two sucker punch to drown the weekend with doubt.