I arrived at my office this morning at 8:00 a.m. for a four-hour stint of "floor duty" or "opportunity time."  In real estate offices (at least in Tennessee), we are always required to have an agent on duty for walk-in customers, to answer phone questions, and oftentimes to simply give directions or tell a caller the price of a home.

In my first hour, I worked to complete a column for our local newspaper about my little town.  I was invited to be a guest columnist for three to four months – just one submission a month which sounded pretty fun.  Of course, I’ve rewritten the article about eight times already.  I still haven’t quite finished it either.  Around 9:00 a.m., more agents began coming in and saying hello, but I was looking forward to seeing Darryl the most. 

About a week ago, Darryl offered to paint my office if I put together a blog for him so I was excited to show him my handiwork so far.  Go say hello to Darryl on his new blog.  I’m also mentoring a new agent who’s had her license for about two weeks.  I had built her a blog when she first started, but touched it up a little.  Go say hello to Karmen on her new blog.  True confession time: two of their articles are the same just so I could build a "seller" section.

After this and extensive phone work (I’m working about five closings right now), Karmen and I were heading for a late lunch when he got her first call to show a home!  I went with her to show how to use the lock box.  Ultimately her potential buyers decided the house would be too much work, but it did give her good experience.

So we had lunch at a froo-froo place, The Chatterbox Cafe, and drank fruit tea.  Before the chicken salad and seasonal fruit came out, I got the call that one of my listings got the clear to close!  Music to my ears!  We had to rush back to the office, pick up the original termite letter and paperwork showing the seller replaced the entire heat/air unit (love those inspectors!), then drove another 10 miles to the closing company.  While driving there, I had to call another agent to explain why my termite guy didn’t pull out one and a half blocks up of the blown insulation in the crawl space.  Instead, he dug the termidore trough, drilled the needed holes, etc. and guaranteed the home to be termite free for a year.  After a long conversation, she finally agreed that was acceptable.

Then I called another seller who just had surgery to see if she was up to going over her inspection contingency removal form.  She wasn’t.  So I had to call the other agent and ask for an extension of the counter until my seller recovers.  They said yes.

Then my daughter called and reminded me to call and order her birthday cake.  She had to look up the store in the phone book for me, but I did get the cake ordered.  I got back to the office and had to fax to a lender a contract extension because another closing originally scheduled for today has been extended until next week.

And I still feel somehow like I’m forgetting something.