Post-AGU Quick Takes

1. AGU went really really well this year! I gave my first talk and it seemed fine. The talk right before mine had technical difficulties in that all of his, mine, and the talk after mine slides had been removed from the network folder and replaced with talks from the previous day. Due to the AGU time constraints, he had to do about half the talk without slides until they were able to fix the problem. Thankfully, I did not have to do an interpretive dance about EMIC waves.


2. I love love that Matthew and I get to go to AGU together every year. I wish I could take him along to all my conferences.




3. I talked to potential future bosses while at the conference and instead of helping to limit my decision, it made things much more complicated. I'm confident I'll end up somewhere super awesome.


4. I made it back from San Francisco in one piece! The very very slow bus ride from Boston was a bit scary at times due to the heavy snow fall, but I was sitting next to a post-doc and our chatting made the time go by much quicker.


It really was a sea of white while driving.


5. After cleaning off the small layer of snow from the car and driving home from the bus station on Saturday, I woke up to this Sunday Morning.




6. Kitty butt was very happy to have me home. It is nice to be greeted by this little creature that sounds excited to see you. I dig it.




7. I made Chickpea Dumplings in Tomato Sauce last night for dinner and it was fantastic. The flavour from toasting the cumin, coriander, and mustard seeds was amazing and I liked the contrast of the sauce with the little dumplings. Since I was just cooking for me, I halved the amount of tomatoes and chickpea dumplings, but kept the seasoning the full amount and it was perfect for me. I was worried about the dumplings falling apart in my leftovers, but they held up like a champ.

Pre-AGU Quicktakes

1. Let it Snow!



2. I made a delicata squash rice bowl based on this recipe this week and it was good. Very good. My changes - pan roasted chickpeas with salt, pepper, and chipotle powder instead of the tofu and no mushrooms. For the sauce, I omitted the lemongrass.


3. I have enough nice Me-Made clothes to make it through the entire AGU week. And then I can show off my threads to everyone!


4. Over the last couple of weeks, I lost two earrings while wearing them. Now I have two sad earrings without mates. I should probably procure more those plastic earring backing so I don't lose anymore.


5. Over Thanksgiving, we went to Philadelphia for our 3rd Honeymoon trip. We visited the Mütter Museum, Eastern State Penitentiary, Rocky Statue, Magic Gardens, and Museum of Natural History with animatronic dinosaurs and a behind the scenes look at how the animal dioramas are made. We also made it to Vedge (oh my goodness so much good vegan food), Miss Rachel's Pantry (okay vegan food), and Brauhaus Schmitz (not even remotely vegan food). We used AirBnb for our lodging and the apartment we stayed in was quite lovely.


6. While in Philadelphia, we went to Hats in the Belfry and bought a couple of cute hats for Matthew - fedora and page boy.


7. We also went to Fabric Row and I quickly became completely overwhelmed by the sheer volume of fabric available! This is not your typical JoAnn's store which was exactly what I was looking for. Overall, Philadelphia was a fantastic trip.