Sunday, April 20, 2014

He's Baaaaaaack (again)

OK, I'm back after a long sabbatical. I had intended to start posting a lot earlier, but things got rather busy rather quickly around the holidays, and, in spite of my constantly telling myself that I would start posting once I got a job, and once things slowed down enough, I neglected to follow up on my promise to myself to start up again.
 All that aside, I finally was able to secure employment again in December, after close to a year (actually 10 days short of a full year) of being unemployed. I got a call in late November from PHEAA's (Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency, for those not in the know) FedLoan Servicing division requesting an interview. I passed the telephone interview, and was scheduled for a personal interview at the Mechanicsburg call center shortly afterward. After clearing up some issues with a private student loan that had defaulted, I was hired at the beginning of December.  After a four week crash course in training, I started on the floor as part of the team that handles the Direct Loan consolidations. The job is pretty good for the most part, but there are days that I wish would end as quickly as possible. Those are the days when I somehow get lucky enough to get all the difficult customers on my line (i.e. those who seem to think that they don't have to pay their loans, or think that they should be exempt from paying interest, or blame me (or FLS) for the fact that their loans have defaulted and were sent to collections).  Most of my coworkers are decent, my friend Peggy helped me to get the job, and my former manager from the Gobble Hell, Kim (the good manager) also works there. I've made a couple of new friends as well, such as a younger girl that was in my training class named Katalin (or Kate) who seems to be becoming my partner in crime, so to speak.
One thing that the new job necessitated was the purchase of a second vehicle.  Since, when I started there, my schedule would have me working into the time that Kat would need the car to get to work. So, with a little help from her mom, we were able to find another vehicle. I got a 2001 Dodge Stratus (it's slightly larger than my old 2000 Stratus which died shortly before we moved down here.) It has had a few problems since we got it, like losing most of its exhaust on the way home from work one night, and a massive repair bill so it could pass inspection (most of the repairs were most likely from an altercation with a tractor trailer the night before, which I hope insurance will cover).  Other than that, and a heater that's stuck on "high" with no AC (that will be the next thing I will get fixed), the car is pretty decent and gets me where I need to go.
I'm not really doing much gaming anymore, since I have less time, but will poke my nose into Star Trek Online once in a while. I've been spending more of my free time re-reading my favorite fantasy fiction series of books, Dragonlance, and just watching movies like Frozen and other DVDs.
Well, that's about all for now. I will endeavor to at least keep this updated about once/week, if not more, from here on out.  -peace!

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