Onward and... upward?

It's Sunday morning, and if you've been reading this blog for any length of time you'll know that means one thing. GG's around (no doubt in bed as we "speak"). So, this one was written before I went to football on Saturday, so that I could just activate the auto-post that I developed for just this kind of situation. (In other words, at some stage I've walked past the laptop and hit the publish button. Actually, some kind of programmed publishing would be great, wouldn't it... you could write, say, 14 posts before going on holiday and then just have them drop into your blog, one by one!).

Anyway, as the next little snapshot of my life will no doubt contain some explicit sexual content (GG again), I'll just ramble for a minute about work, and what's been going on since I last wrote about my impending doom. Errr, I mean my impending self-employment.

Last week I had a meeting with "Dick" (actually, that's really his name), the guy I report into at the moment, and we agreed that I'd stay with the company until 31st December. That gives me a little more time to get myself organised, so I’m pleased. Now we have to agree the details of my severance package, and at the moment we're three months apart in our negotiations (over here, severance payments are tax free, so that makes a difference of 4/5 months security of income). I imagine we'll meet somewhere in the middle so I should walk away with enough cash to keep food on the children's plates for a while. In the meantime, I'm going to be very nice to Dick indeed.

He also said he wants me to work with them as a consultant on the project that I've been writing about (the one we just got on the shortlist for) and then on other projects as and when they need me, so I guess that's going to be my first job as WDKY Consultancy. A friend who runs a business in Lancashire also has work for me post-December, so things are already looking a bit brighter. Oh, and I spent a bit of time last week on some set-up stuff for the new company and got lots done, including:

1. Meeting with the directors of our old parent company and agreeing a deal to acquire the name, logo, IP, web pages, and all the other stuff that I need. And I don't have to pay them until I hit a net profit figure we've agreed between us. If I do it won't be a problem.

2. Amending all the pages of the old website to bring them up to date. I'm just waiting for a price for implementing the changes, web & email hosting, and reprinting stationery, business cards, report covers & brochures. Hopefully that's going to be sorted in a few days.

3. Finding a brilliant serviced office building a couple of miles from me and a minutes walk from the train station. They also offer "virtual offices" for start-ups, which is just stuff like call and mail forwarding, meeting rooms as and when required, etc etc - it's perfect, and I've got a meeting there on Tuesday to agree the details.

4. Buying a Sage accounting application on eBay, and for £10 (its over £500 retail)!! It'll do all my invoicing, VAT and other tax accounting, year-end reconciliations, P&L, balance sheet, blah blah blah. That's a big headache out the way.

I've got loads that still needs doing, but it feels like its all coming together now, so the excitement is just starting to outweigh the apprehension. And on that note, I'm going to go back upstairs to bed. Wish me luck :-)

PS Talking of eBay, that iPod refund hit my Paypal account this morning. How completely weird is that?