Create a plot_annotations method

[bw4sz]

• To help users create a more intuitive workflow add a plot_annotation methods.
• Harden the utilities.read_file function

[ethanwhite]

I'm pretty over-committed this week, so I'm going to ask @henrykironde and @bw4sz to go ahead and make whatever decisions/fixes you two think are best go ahead and merge without my further review. If you need me to look at it again it will need to be later next week.