Blog #1...ever

So this is my first blog activity. Ever. Never before have I written or responded to a blog, and I rarely read them because, honestly, I usually don't care what some random guy has to say.

So you may be asking yourself "Why do I care what this random guy has to say?" The answer to that question is that you probably shouldn't care too much. I fully expect to make no more than 3 posts, of which a total of 2 people will read all of them (I assume I can count on Jenna and Mom).

The reason I created this (other than the boredom of my current week of training) is that I was specifically asked to do so by 2 completely unrelated people, which I think constitutes a fan club.

The reason that I was told to start a blog is that I was recently accepted into the Ernst & Young Global Exchange Program.  Apologies for patting my own back, but this is a somewhat exclusive program, with approximately 20 people from around the US being accepted each year to spend 18 months working abroad.  There was a pretty complex application process that I started back in November of 2007 that involved writing a big business case, being sponsored by one of my partners here in the US, and most importantly finding an audit client in a foreign country that would take up a large portion of my hours.

The process had several approvals along the way, and my application was written to have me go to Dublin and work on a large client over there, Oldcastle, that also had a few subsidiaries in Dallas, so that was my big business case.  I got through the first few steps in the process, most importantly acceptance into the program itself by the people who run it in New York, but the last step was to be approved by the Irish office.  I was told this wouldn't be a problem since my planned client would take up 85% of my time, so I was really surprised when I got a call saying that Ireland had rejected me.  Apparently they were a little overstaffed, so even though there was a partner over there who wanted me, the business was going to force him to take one of their existing employees instead.  I quickly went into a state of depression, but then was told of a light at the end of the tunnel - since I had been accepted into the program in general, they wanted me to talk to some people in London, who might have an opening for me.  Long story...I interviewed with some folks in London and was accepted into the program in May.

Jenna and I had been talking a lot about this and the fact that London would probably be even better than Dublin, so I was pretty excited when I got the news, and basically decided that I wasn't going to be able to get any real work done the rest of the day, so I left early and started on a project to break the news to Jenna.

First I baked and decorated this celebratory cake:

Yes, it was as delicious as it looks.  And yes, we did eat the entire thing by ourselves.

For added fun, I decorated our entry, so when Jenna opened the door to come home from work, this is the first thing she saw:

And of course I was standing at the end of the hall holding the cake.  I think she liked the effort.

So, Jenna and I are moving to London in about a week, and I'm going to do my best to post the details of our many adventures here for your reading pleasure and to make you jealous. And if people do decide to read it, maybe we'll keep it up for a while.