While I was in Washington DC, Pam took advantage of my absence to acquire not one, but two furry friends. I've never owned any animals, apart from the fifteen goldfish pining for me in my garden pond in London and a quarter share in a guinea pig when I was a kid.
I liked the fact that in theory we could, at the drop of a hat, take off on an impromptu weekend's kayak rolling in the alligator-infested swamps of Louisiana's Cajun country without having to worry about who'd look after the pets in our absence.
But we don't. So Pam took the decision out of my hands, and my concerns were instantly dispelled when Miller and Velvet came bounding into my life.
Velvet is a crappy name for a dog, and the people at Bark in the Park, the event where Pam adopted him, admitted they were running short of inspiration when they chose it. So we rechristened him Bud.
He's part chow, part spaniel, about a year old, fully of slobbery puppyish enthusiasm and with an endearing habit of sighing deeply as though the weight of the world were on his shoulders. His favourite pastimes are gnawing high-voltage electrical cables and surfing the internet.
As for the cat: well, Miller is immaculately groomed and behaved, extremely friendly, and of way above average intelligence. He likes to work up an appetite for breakfast by polishing off the New York Times crossword; his record is three minutes and twenty-seven seconds.
And so to the job: a nice little part-time contract as the grandly titled UK English language expert for Rosetta Stone, the world's largest language learning software company. They're not a well-known name in Europe yet, but in the US their bright yellow products have established a blanket presence, especially in airports.
My job was to adapt US English products into British English. I spent a week training at their headquarters in Harrisonburg, Virginia, a couple of hours outside DC, and returned to New Orleans full of enthusiasm for the intellectually challenging tasks ahead. And then, just a couple of weeks later, they unceremoniously dumped me on cost grounds.
I can't say I blame them. I did ask before I started whether there'd be very much work for me; after all, there isn't exactly a yawning gulf between US and UK English when you're learning sentences like "The girl is running" and "The men are reading the newspaper".
I was annoyed at having squandered seven precious days of my short time on earth, but at least I got paid for it, met lots of fellow wordsmiths, and got to see a beautiful part of the country. So no hard feelings there.
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