Life of a Single Married Lady

Two weeks ago I attended my sixth Annual Meeting of the American Meteorological Society: a time of seeing old friends, making new research contacts, and experiencing great advances in atmospheric science research. Thanks to the AMS meeting planners, it also means I get to take in culture! This year the AMS meeting was in New Orleans, LA, home of beignets and plantations and great music and food. Enjoy the pictures! Our conference center was right on the riverwalk, which made for pretty walking breaks. The Mississippi was really high because of flooding along the river in places like St. Louis, and river managers actually opened up some sort of river diversion for only the third time since 1930! It's amazing to look at the Mississippi River on one side of the riverwalk and look down  to the city (about 10ft below sea level) on the other side. Famed beignets of Cafe du Monde, drenched in powdered sugar and oh so delicious. Cafe du Monde! Not pictured: pigeons who real...

From start to finish, behold: our kitchen renovation! Edit:  I've added two "before" pics Kitchen before Living room-kitchen wall before ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Step 1: Decide to renovate your kitchen, plan the layout, get super excited and choose all the colors and cabinets. Step 2: Decide that you are not nearly advanced enough to make this a DIY project. Hire some super great locals to help you out. Step 3: Let the nice men tear your kitchen apart. Step 4: Panic after finding out you have no exterior wall insulation and because your sandwich supplies are running out. Step 5: Rejoice greatly concerning drywall. Step 6: Paint the kitchen and the living room wall, which the drywall guy kindly fixed up so the textures all matched. Step 7: The cabinets! They are here!! Step 8: Clean up and enjoy the new kitchen! New doorway placement (it was nearer the built-in before cons...