I am pleased to report that on Monday 4th February I successfully underwent surgery to remove my pituitary adenoma. Starting at 7am the neurosurgergy team at University of Texas Southerwestern Medical Center, led by Dr Christopher Madden, made an incision under my upper lip and cut a path into my nasal passages and the sphenoid sinus. From there they drilled a hole large enough to remove the tumour, and did so completely. While I lost quite a lot fo blood (7 out of 8 pints!), I was conscious and feeling pretty good by the time evening arrived. I spent two nights in Intensive Care (the second only because they didn't have any spare beds in the main part of the hospital) and was released home at lunchtime on Friday. Remarkable, really.

Many thanks to those of you who sent their best wishes, cards, flowers etc. and apologies to those whom I did not inform in advance! I look forward to catching up with you all by letter, phone or email while I am still off work recuperating over the next few weeks.

After four months of forced unemployment while I sorted out my visa problems, and another three months in temporary employment, I have finally found a permanent job!! Guaranty Bank is about to spin out of its holding company, Temple Inland, and I will be working for the Governance team on all the areas of regulation with which the newly-public company will have to comply. In effect, it will be very similar to the Company Secretarial role I had at GSK. And it will be particularly interesting working in a company at the time of its initial stock exchange listing.

Crack open the bubbly!

It nevers rains but it pours. In August I registered with a cardiologist here in Dallas for ongoing care of the atrial fibrillation that was diagnosed five years ago in the UK. He followed the diagnostic chain of evidence and quickly diagnosed what the medical profession in the UK had missed all this time, namely a thyrotrophic pituitary adenoma. The MRI shows that it is a little over one cubic inch in size but is not yet pressing on anything important yet, like my brain (if any). Of course, having not yet secured a permanent job here I have no health insurance so we are currenty weighing up the options, including the possibility of returning to the UK to have the surgery to remove it.

A little over five months since I last did any useful work (perhaps my former colleagues at GSK would disagree with this description, so let's say "paid employment" instead!), I have found another job, albeit a temporary one. I have started as a Temporary Corporate Paralegal at American Airlines' Headquarters near Dallas-Fort Worth airport. Going well so far!

Well, we are really getting into the local culture now. Our friends Todd and Laura invited us to the Mesquite Rodeo with their daughters Chloe and Lauren. We had a fantastic time, the highlights being the bull riding and Whiplash the Cowbow Monkey (honestly - have a look at the photos!). Melissa found the calf roping a bit too much but whatever you think of the animal welfare aspects, you have to take your (ten gallon) hat off to guys who can chase a calf from horseback, rope it and bind its feet in under 12 seconds.

This is definitely a must for any of you from the UK who come to visit us.

I've got my green Card! The U.S. Embassy in London finally saw sense and sent me a duplicate visa packet rather than insisting that I fly back to the U.K. to collect it. So after 4 months of legal wrangling I am now authorised to work for a U.S. employer. Now I just need to re-acquaint myself with the meaning of the word in italics.

Tonight Melissa and I went to our first concert since Georgie was born. We went to see Travis at House of Blues in Dallas. Fabulous songs and a superb sense of humour. Great stuff!

We all went to a classical music thingy (to use the technical term) for children at our local library today. We plonked Mia on the floor to listen to the woodwind trio and she levered herself up and did a bit of crawling. Both legs definitely moved in turn - a first for her!

Update:

In the days since this momentous breakthrough she has decided that forwards crawling is so passé and now only crawls backwards.

I'll try to capture some of this bizarre locomotion on video and post it in the next few days (by which I really mean weeks).

Time passes so slowly when you are trying to sell a house... Read More...

Six years ago, Leeds United reached the semi-finals of the UEFA Champions League. In theory this made them one of the top four teams in Europe.

Today they were relegated to the ridiculously-named League One, which is really the third level of English football (soccer). In theory they are no longer one of the best 44 teams in England.

Georgie showed her Dr Evil side today as we left a seafood restaurant in Dallas. As we passed the tank containing lobsters she asked me whether they were real. When I confirmed that they were she said, " They must die so that we can eat them"! I think seeing her hold the tip of her little finger against her mouth might have been a figment of my imagination.

Anyone who lived through the fuel crisis in the UK in the 1970s would feel right at home here at the moment. We have been in this house for four weeks and have so far suffered two prolonged power cuts. Candles and torches/flashlights are now within reach at all times.

We moved into our rental property last Saturday (14 April). Six days later all four of us could be found cowering in the closet in Georgie's room (dimensions about 2 feet by 4 feet) because the tornado sirens were going off! That closet is the only space in the house that doesn't contact an outside wall.

Melissa told me that the weather here was beautiful all the time - I wasn't expecting this! I suppose I should have done my own research...

A quick description of how we got here and what I still have to do to be allowed to work! Read More...