Boring news

I believe all of you know that we want to move to North Carolina and have been looking for the right time and opportunity for our family to move. We have an update for you, but, I want to start by telling you some history of the last year.

I told my boss about 9 months ago while on a trip to Ohio that we were planning on moving to North Carolina. He started planning for the move almost as soon as we got back by giving some of my responsibilities to other members of our team and making sure I had time to train them before we moved. I had originally told that we were going to start looking as soon as we sold the rental houses. He’d ask me every couple of weeks for an update and I’d tell him that we were still planning on it and that the timing was still flexible, but we wanted to do it by April 2007. Everything proceeded with the plans for me to leave AEGON and find a new job.

Background information - We have an office in Atlanta, GA that manages some TPA’s (Third Party Administrators) like we do in Baltimore. Their TPA’s administer GAP insurance and Debt cancellation insurance which is not what we do in Baltimore. In Baltimore, we do mainly health products.

In late October, my boss, Jeff, was working with the TPA director in Atlanta, Karla, on a Due Diligence and set-up of a new TPA for them. I’m kind of our expert in Baltimore on setting up and terminating TPA’s so he asked me to go with him down to Atlanta and help them get a start on this new TPA. I wrote about the trip I think in my first blog entry. The trip to Atlanta went good and we met with Karla and her team and began to walk them through the set-up and documentation process that we follow in Baltimore. The partner they were setting up had a location in CA so I kind of volunteered to go on the due diligence visit with them. I didn’t have a lot going on at work and thought it would be a good experience. While I on the trip I told Karla that I was leaving AEGON and moving to NC. I still don’t remember how it came up, but when I got back Jeff asked me to come to his office. Jeff had also asked me to keep it kind of quiet that I was moving until we had some solid dates. He started the conversation in his office by asking me if I’d told Karla that I was moving. I thought he was going to be upset that I told her, so I gave him excuses that she didn’t work in Baltimore and that I told her it wasn’t public knowledge and not to share the info. He interrupted my at that point and said that he didn’t care why I told her but that she had called him and told him that she wanted to hire my to work from NC for that Atlanta office. Jeff told her that he hadn’t thought of that and that he was going to explore the idea of me working for Baltimore rather than let me work for Atlanta. It’s been about a month now and as of today; AEGON is offering to let me continue my current job and work from home in NC. I will be telecommuting and traveling to Baltimore/Atlanta almost once a week for a couple of days (one night). I still have to sign a formal agreement that needs to be approved by HR and Legal before it’s official, but it’s been through Jeff, and two SVP’s and I have the verbal approval.

We are planning to go to NC on Jan. 13th and LaDonna will stay for the week. I’ll be flying out of Raleigh to visit an account and come back on Thursday of that week and look for a house on Friday or Saturday. If all goes smoothly and we can find a house then we should be moved by the end of February.

This is definitely a blessing we have been praying for and has been answered by Heavenly Father. I had no idea that this would come about and move as fast as it has. We prayed almost a year ago to know if we should pursue moving and we received an answer that we should. I’m a very impatient person and several times I thought that it wasn’t moving fast enough and we put off doing things “until we move”. I can now say that I believe Heavenly Father has his hand in our lives and will bless us.