Another, much more cheerful, announcement

I accepted today an offer to go to work at British Gas...as an employee, of all things.

I've enjoyed consulting and you make a lot of money at it, but this is a golden opportunity that I just couldn't pass up. What BG is doing is fascinating stuff. Futhermore, I know everybody on the team I'll be joining and it's a dream team of people with whom I've worked before -- and they're some of the very best people I've ever worked with. And the salary and benefits actually came in at a level that surprised me and allowed me to justify walking away from consultancy, which I had not expected ever to do.

The offer is signed, sealed and delivered, subject to a background check and a drug test. As long as the background check doesn't object to speeding tickets and a Chapter 13 bankruptcy (from the house debacle, for long-term readers who know what I'm talking about), and as long as the drug test doesn't include a test for excessive coffee consumption, all should be well.

I have very much enjoyed working at bp over the years -- it has easily been my favorite of all the corporate working environments I've seen over the years, including what I've seen at the many client sites where I consulted during the 250,000-annual-travel-miles years when I was platinum on both American and Continental. But there's a four-year cap on how long you can work at bp as a consultant, and I know their pay scales for employees and know that they have no chance of keeping me on as an employee, through no fault of their own. (H.R. is a universe of its own, and you just have to take those folks' rules as givens, like the weather or gravity.) I'm going to have to leave in a few months anyway, and I find it hard to believe that another opportunity like this BG one is going to present itself dutifully eight or nine months from now.

The only real drawback was going to be the significantly increased commute; but recent events having transpired, I find that my housing options are suddenly all but infinitely increased. I can pretty much live, now, wherever I bloody well please, including within a few blocks of BG.

This gives me a month to indulge myself by driving back and forth in front of the security guards in the bp parking lots talking ostentatiously into my cell phone with my unlatched seatbelt fluttering lightly in the breeze through the open window...no, no, just teasing.

Seriously, bp has been a great place to be, and I would have had no problem staying there for years to come, had long-term consultancy been an option and had this BG offer not fallen into my lap. Great place, great people, great atmosphere. In many ways I'm sorry to leave it.

So, um, quite a week I'm having here.