the joys of being an army wife

hi all,

for those of you still looking for that perfect someone, might i suggest you stay far away from the fantastical ideal of a man in uniform.  don't get me wrong, i love my husband more than i can express in words.  however, being a military wife is pretty much the suckiest thing in the world.  getting past living only and being deprived of physical contact for months or years at a time, you are the one stuck at home dealing with every little problem that rears its ugly head.  

take this past week for example.  customer service experience number one:  in order to close on the sale of a property, you need a piece of paper from the mortgage company stating the amount of money that you owe on the mortgage.  this seems like a very simple thing, call mortgage company; request payoff statement; bank sends payoff statement.  however, when you are an army wife with a military mortgage, your name can't be on the mortgage papers so your husband has to verify that you are an authorized user on the account.  great, unless your mortgage gets sold to a new company and they don't recognize the form that the previous company used so you are screwed once again.  

before bryan left last year, we attempted to solve this problem by executing a power of attorney so that i could handle these issues and not have to have him for everything.  however, the 'lovely' people at bank of america (quotations signify immense amounts of sarcasm) couldn't seem to get the POA that i faxed them 10 times attached to the right accounts.  so instead of just calling and asking for a simple piece of paper you have to have the following conversation (after waiting on hold for 30 minutes to talk to a live human of course):

"thank you for calling bank of america today, how can i help you?"

"yes, i'd like to request a payoff statement for both of my mortgage accounts please"

"of course, ma'am.   i would be happy to help you with that.  can i get the account numbers please?"

"sure.  i need statements for accounts ...... and ........."

"and can i get your name please?"

"yes. it is ashlea tobeck"

"i'm sorry ma'am, but i don't show you listed on this account"

"well that is because your bank doesn't recognize the authorized user form from our previous mortgage holder and since my husband is currently over seas, he hasn't been able to fill out a new one.  i've faxed a copy of our power of attorney multiple times, but it doesn't seem to have done any good."

"well, i'm very sorry, but i can't do anything more unless the primary account holder calls to aut"

"i understand.  does that mean that you will be staying about 5 hours late to accept his call from afghanistan? your normal american business hours are fantastic for those of us lucky enough to be on american soil right now, however, they do little good for soldiers who aren't.  is there any other way to make this work."

"yes.  if you fax a copy of your power of attorney to the following number, we will be able to talk with you."

"i see.  i believe that is the same number that i have faxed the power of attorney to on several previous occasions.  is there another number that i could try?"

"that is the fax number for the department that handles power of attorneys and authorized user requests.  they will be able to process the information."

"really now.  well i guess i will go drive to fed ex office and waste another $10 fruitlessly faxing this document yet again.  thank you for you time"

"is there anything else i can help you with today?"

"so you can't do what i really need you to do, but if i asked you would do something else for me?   so if i call and ask for the balance of the account, you will tell me that you can't give it to me because i'm not an authorized user.  however,  i can THEN ask for the payoff statement and that will work?  don't mind my sarcasm, i'm just trying to figure out the system here."

"i'm sorry that i couldn't be of more help.  please call back when you have faxed the power of attorney."  

"actually there is one more thing you could do for me.  can i get the direct line to the office where i am faxing this power of attorney.  maybe if i call them while i am sending the fax, they can assure me that it has arrived in the proper place.  at least then i will know the name of the disorganized person who keeps losing things on their desk."

"ma'am there isn't a phone number for that office.  procedure requires that you fax the POA and we will attach it to the file when it arrives.  please enjoy the rest of your day!"

I HATE CUSTOMER SERVICE.  nothing should be this difficult.  i have however in the past couple weeks of extensive research determined several key phrases that aid in getting what you need from a customer service representative.

1) could i please talk with your supervisor's supervisor please?

2) i'm sorry that it is inconvenient for you that my husband is currently fighting for your personal freedom.  i guarantee it is more inconvenient on my end.  (this of course only works if the company that you are calling doesn't outsource their customer service department to bangalor.  they don't care much about american freedom sadly)

3) what was your full name again?  i want to make sure that i spell it correctly in the letter that i'm writing to your boss.

4)  can you give me the name of the head of your legal department, i'd hate for the lawsuit i'm sending to get lost?

5) sadly, as comforting as it is to you personally, expletives tend to get you transferred to the people who have had power point crisis management training who try to talk you down like you are going to plant a bomb in their office or something.  yes it would be very therapeutic to rid the world of excess annoyance, but i'm not a psycho killer, i just want to pay you, however, if you don't want your money, i'll gladly hold on to it.

ok, rant over.  or at least the part that you have to read.  it should be enough for you to get a glimpse of what the past 7 days have been like.  closing is done and house is sold, so hopefully i can get my hubby home for a bit and see if we can't make things easier for a while.

6 more days!

to the moon and back

while erin was here a couple weeks ago, she decided to set up an interview with a hospital out in montrose.  montrose is a smaller town out in western CO that looks truly beautiful in pictures and why not go for a big change when you are starting out in a new career.  so we did a bit of planning, got in the car and headed west.

while researching the town of montrose, we learned that it has around 19,000 people and offers a decent amount of shopping, eating, entertainment type places and has several hotels.  all in all not a bad place to be.  we found a really great hotel deal in cedaredge, which is about 30 miles from montrose and packed our bags.  as we were already going west, we decided to stop in vail on the way and do some hiking, sight-seeing type stuff since erin hadn't even been to vail in the summer.

vail was amazing.  it was a little cloudy and overcast, which also meant that it was cooler than the past few days had been.  we found a great little place to eat in vail village and took a nice walk through the shops and stuff before we rode the gondola up the mountain.  back in 2006 when we were here for spring break, we skied for a day at vail and both of us remember how steep it was in the winter so we weren't sure whether we were going to hike or just ride the gondola and walk around at the top of the mountain.

we ended up deciding to hike back down, which was a very pretty trail, but vail is just as steep in the summer as it is in the winter.  by the time we made it to the bottom my knee was quite angry.  it was a really pretty walk through several aspen groves and lots of pretty mountain meadows.  the flowers out in the mountains are so pretty.

we managed to beat the rain in vail by about 5 minutes and spent the next couple of hours on the road in the pouring rain.  driving through the mountains in a storm is actually truly beautiful, though the big trucks on the interstate get a little scary in the rain. 

going west in CO means getting off of the interstate and heading south a bit as well as west.  the drive is magnificent.  the rocks start to get this amazing red hue and the silvery aspen leaves are always pretty.  we were quite excited by the view and enjoyed the adventure of everything new around each corner.  neither of us had ever been this direction in CO, so it was very neat to do something new and different.  check out how pretty this drive was.

this is just west and a little south of central colorado.  a little farther west from this beautiful place, is the MOON.  they didn't really fake the moon landing, they just didn't tell everyone that the moon was in colorado.  western colorado is a foreign land unlike anything that i have every seen before.  the mountains start to flatten out and become mesas and everything else looks sort of desert like, but different at the same time.  i have never seen anything more interesting and yet terrifying at the same time.  by the time we got close to where we were going, it was quite dark and everything was terribly frightening.  we drove for miles without seeing any sign of life and then we would come across a small town called hotchkiss.  it was so alien that erin and i were actually contemplating turning around and going back the way we came.  however, we kept telling ourselves that it would get better when we got to cedaredge because they had more than one hotel meaning it was a decent sized town with at least a fast food establishment.  we were WRONG.  cedaredge is a tiny town that is home to a single restaurant, the blue sky saloon, whose kitchen sadly closes at 9pm.  it was well after 10 when we got to cedaredge so we had to do some serious searching for food.  the guy at the front desk of the hotel even admitted that the road we took was terrifying.  we ended up finding pretty good chinese food in delta for dinner that night, but it was hard to be excited about where we were, though we were unbelievably slap happy.  the situation got terribly funny the longer we were in it.  by the time we tried to sleep, we couldn't help but laugh at everything.  i don't think either of us actually slept that night.

the next morning we got up and cedaredge was a bit less scary by daylight.  the mesas are actually quite pretty, though not as pretty as the mountains and the sun made everything seem a little less desolate and terrifying.  the drive to montrose was still a little scary and the edge of montrose itself was even worse.  the road we took into montrose led us into a tiny, mountain town that had some small businesses, but none that looked in anyway successful or decent.  after i dropped erin off at the hospital, i decided to go investigate.  in the end montrose is not at all a bad town.  it has a decent business community and even has a walmart and a chilis.  if only the hospital had a budget enough to pay erin enough to make it worth moving across the country. 

these are the pictures of western CO.

now if that doesn't look like the moon, then i don't know what does :)

on the way back east, i took erin up to mt. evans and we stopped in idaho springs for pizza at beau joes.  it was overall a good trip, though montrose and the surrounding areas are quite scary.  this is the progression of the view of mountains as you drive from western to eastern CO. 

and on the way back from the moon, you get to the highest paved road in north america.  mt. evans is a really beautiful place and the sheer elevation is beyond comprehension.  the road to the top is not well paved and it takes some really interesting twists and turns making it not for the faint of heart.  here are the pictures of the journey.

and as you can tell, we survived our trip to the moon and back.  it was a rather interesting adventure and i am quite glad that erin and i were together for the journey.