It’s like ants in here. Mortgage bankers galore, answering phones and pacing and typing. My ole Boss James walked by “my” cube (they don’t give me my own cube) earlier and asked, “When are you going to write about our new people?” as he vaguely wafted his hand over a few of them. Dude, they’ve been here like four days. I don’t know anything about these people. Correction, the guy sitting next to me is named Richard and he lives near Gallery Furniture. That’s it. And he’s wearing a white shirt today. I typically like to write informative pieces about my co-workers, but with James rushing me, this is the best I can come up with:

Just working with what I’ve got, folks. If Gallery Furniture Richard does anything interesting, I’ll let you know.

And another new guy, John, is on the phone right now going, “Okay you see the picture of you in front of the trees? Now click that button that says ‘Edit Profile Picture’ – you see it? Click that.” I mouthed out, “Your grandma?” but he hasn’t answered.

Now, on to other matters: I sold gold.

Y’all remember when I visited the CoinStar machine, how I felt like a hobo? Well, I sold a gold coin this weekend. I swear I’m not, like, living in the gutters over here, but y’all, gold is hot right now! Here’s the thing. When I got married, someone gave us a gold coin as a wedding gift (everybody else gave us fondue pots). For the past ten years, my husband and I have kept that gold coin (and re-gifted the fondue pots) tucked quietly away in any random hiding place we could think of. In our first apartment it stayed under the kitchen sink, in our second apartment we stuck it in the laundry room. Then I think we lost it for a few months and found it once we moved into our first house. Pretty sure we kept it with our dinner plates back then. Every so often, we’d discuss our gold.

“A Hawaii vacation sounds nice. Think we should sell the coin?”

“You think we’ll ever sell the coin? Or should we save it for, like, wartime?”

“What are we going to do with this thing? Should we keep it so we can say we own gold?”

Then last month, I was chatting with V-Shaped Mortgage Banker Will Zugheri. Will used to be in the jewelry business. Seriously, sometimes people even find my blog by typing “Zugheri Jewelry.” Will was reminiscing about the good ole days and telling me about dealing with gold. (On a side note, Will was trying to explain something about how Rolexes were made and he started looking around the office. I realized he was actually checking to see if any of us were wearing Rolexes so he could demonstrate further. “Uh, Will? Nobody’s sporting Rolexes around here, buddy.”) Somehow the conversation drifted toward selling gold, and I mentioned my gold coin. And that’s when Will gave me the scoop on gold. “Don’t go to any of these ‘We buy gold’ places. Go to blah blah blah…” and named some fancy sounding gold business.

For the next few weeks, Will kept an eye on gold prices for me as I picked his brain on the gold industry. “You think it’s, like, shady to sell gold?” I asked. Will assured me that it is perfectly acceptable to sell gold, and finally told me, if he were me, he’d sell it. I was still nervous. I asked him about it so much you would’ve thought I had this wooden chest of gold in my dining room. Like my back porch was like a scene from The Goonies with jewels and necklaces and signet rings and Sloth in the backround eating a Baby Ruth.

But I had one coin, people. One coin. And I decided to go for it. I sold gold.

Outside the gold store:

Inside the gold store:

Guess who opened the door for me once I got there? A police officer! I was so nervous. I held up my purse, indicating my gold, trying to prove that I wasn’t a robber and that there was no need to be alarmed. I had this whole speech memorized for once I got to the counter. So I’ve had this gold coin for a while and I swear I’m not a gambling addict or anything but I was wondering if this is an establishment that could help me…

I never got a word out. The old man behind the counter said, “I see you’ve got a Canadian Maple there. I’ll be right back.” Forty-five seconds later he came back and told me he’d give me a boatload of money for it. Boatload for these pockets, anyway.

Here’s me being nervous about carrying around my gold money.

Speaking of boatloads of cash, this is the final week for my Kindle Fire HD giveaway. Read the details here because I don’t feel like typing it all out again.

Finally, have any of you sold gold? Or pawned anything? Had a gambling addiction? Robbed a gas station? Tell me all about it! I’m off to buy a Rolex.

No joke, the garbage truck just broke down in front of my house while clasped onto my garbage can. Below, the picture of my garbage man holding my garbage can hostage:

After sitting in front of my house for a while, smoking a cigarette and guzzling bottled water, the garbage man was finally able to get ole Blue to crank.

Speaking of stress, it’s been a doozy of a week at the mortgage office. Well, not for everyone. See, Chad and Rachelle just got back from the Circle of Excellence trip (that’s the fancy award vacay they won for our branch being the most fabulous branch in the company). Please note this is the trip that I have tried to attend for years now but am continually denied. Please also note that I am very upset with our company for not allowing me to attend as the corporate blogger and that won’t they be sorry when I start blogging for the Evil Big Box Banks and leave them in the dust. I mean, not that the Big Box Banks have asked, but, you know, they might. Anyway, while Chad and Rachelle are all tanned and refreshed from their jaunt in Cabo, the rest of the office passed the week going nuts.

On Wednesday, Nikki pranced in with a birthday cake and it’s not even any of our birthdays. It was just a stressful day and she knew everybody needed cake. Hayley walked in the kitchen going, “Oh! Cake! Who’s birthday?” as she shoveled it onto her plate, preparing to eat away her stress.

While the office worked like mad with deadlines and crazy phone calls and not eating lunch until 4:30, our borrowers kicked back and enjoyed peaceful weeks with their families.

If you would like to send a relaxing candle set to my hardworking co-workers, please fill out a loan application on the right. If that was your birthday cake Nikki mistakenly picked up from Kroger instead of the TGIF one she originally ordered, we’re really sorry and we hope you had a great birthday. The cake was delicious.