Life of a Single Married Lady

I thought I'd take some time to talk about the future, since I've got a busy 6 months or so coming up!  I posted a bit of my news on Facebook but here are some more details!  Disclaimer: Wil and I are crazy people; normal people don't try to do all this stuff in such a short period of time! First of all, it's officially official: I received an offer letter from the University of Wisconsin-Madison to work as a researcher at the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies!  There are a few different projects that I might work on; in general, they all deal with satellite observations of high-latitude precipitation (read: rain/snow in regions nearer to the poles than the equator).  I'll also hopefully be able to keep up a bit with the work I'm doing now, which uses a statistical algorithm to study lots of different combinations of parameters efficiently.  We're applying the method to mountain precipitation now, but hope to apply it to other phys

What are blogs for, if not the occasional rant? In case you don't know, I am an avid Game of Thrones  (the show) fan, despite the overwhelming number of breasts and slit throats in each episode (to be fair, it's all in the books).   My fandom tendencies come from the fact that I devoured the book series A Song of Ice and Fire before the show started (I sound like a hipster!) and have been hooked since.  One of my few wishes for this world is that GRRM publishes those 1500 or so pages of manuscript he's been sitting on before the good Lord decides that He needs an unpredictable author upstairs. So today's post is brought to you by my general grumpiness and an interview I saw with Natalie Dormer, trying to get information about what happens to Margaery after her king/husband's recent death at their wedding. Here's my question: do people read books anymore? The media, as well as avid fans of the HBO show, are full to the brim with questions for the actors an

I have been all over the country lately, and I am very, very tired.  Thankfully, in a few more weeks my semester will be over! I won't have to take classes any more, ever!  Unless I decide to go back for a PhD, but that is a decision that Future Sam will make. As you may have noticed, I try to share my cooking adventures on this blog because that's where I feel most adventurous.  I'll start with my success story from last week: Lemon-Cumin Chicken with a Spinach-Mint Pesto.  I know this sounds like a mashup of strong flavors that will be terrible, and I felt trepidation initially.  However, the marinade and pesto came together easily, and grilling chicken isn't difficult.  The one caveat I will list here is that this dish is not for the faint of heart!  The flavors, while not at all overwhelming, are bold--it's the cumin, really.  If you normally like things with cumin, you should absolutely cook this.  I'll put the recipe and link below. Now it's t