Life of a Single Married Lady

I never gave a great introduction to our newest family member, Kaiser. Here are some things you may or may not know about our pup! His age is uncertain, but we have decreed that his birthday is the day before Thanksgiving and he'll be turning four in 2016 He is very strong and loves wrestling matches He has some new friends He absolutely adores soft things He is startled by nothing less than the city's jackhammers outside (or, of course, the air escaping an inflatable camp pad) He looks good in everything His main talent is destroying stuffed toys in 5 minutes or less, but only the ones we give him to destroy (which doesn't happen anymore for obvious reasons) He's a good scale against which to compare all the mail Wil gets when he's gone He's got the best nose this side of the Mississippi He's the greatest dog in the entire world and we love him so much! Welcome to the family,...

As is my approximately yearly wont, I am re-reading the Harry Potter series. This tends to worry my husband, who doesn't quite understand why I might read a series (or any one book) over and over and over again, when there exist millions of other tomes worthy of my attention. However, the HP series is special. The books came out at such a time that book Harry and real-life Sam were within a couple of years of age, and they were exactly the genre that I simply adored (and still do) - fantasy, magic, hidden worlds, romance, all the good stuff. I remember praying for my letter to come via owl; I remember waiting in line Up North with Dad to get the 4th book at midnight, after which I read the entire 734 pages in about 24 hours; I remember reading either the 6th or 7th book with my best friend but about six hours behind, and wondering why she was crying. I still cry every time Harry goes into that forest at the end! I was originally going to write a post about the things that the ...

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...

The Tushaushold has experienced a lot of excitement recently! Between all of the excitement, Wil is loving his job and traveling all over the country without me (sad for me!), and I've taken up crochet like a madwoman. This is great for my Christmas present stash, but not so much for my partly finished cross-stitch projects... We'll be happy to introduce a furry new addition to the family after Thanksgiving (!!!), so we installed a fence! Despite the fact that it makes our house look even more pink, it's a pretty great fence. It'll keep Future Dog Tushaus in the yard and give us a bit of backyard privacy. Of course we celebrated Halloween in style! I was particularly excited this year because we had trick-or-treaters for the first time (and of course all our friends came up to visit). One kid even tried to sneak into the party! So festive!       I was Boggart Professor Snape, and Wil was a crazy mad scientist! As the gales of November began to...