Day in the Life: Spring 2016/ WIAW

I made it through my hell weekend! Yippee! I think I left the house all of once on Sunday. But I think I made it through relatively unscathed! I want to do a pair of day in the life posts. I wanted to do a Monday/Tuesday pair, but this Monday was my test and I didn’t want to spend the time documenting it. The reason for 2 days? My schedule is super variable. Mondays I have 8 hours of class. Tuesdays I have 1.5 hours. So I’ll document next Monday!

And while we’re at it, why not make it a WIAW?

Before I get into my day, I want to share an awesome dinner from Monday night. Since my class is in my hometown, I go home for dinner beforehand to beat traffic. My mom made an awesome slow cooker tomato bisque. The trick? It’s filled with veggies! Zucchini and celery. I included the recipe in a homemade slow cooker cookbook I made my mom for Christmas, but I dug it up an fit can be found here. My mom also made killer “croutons,” which were gluten free bread toasted and crusted with parmesan. Insane.

6:30 am: Get out of bed. It’s 30 minutes before my alarm, but I like waking up before my alarm because it makes the morning a bit more relaxed.

I then start the getting ready process. Pre-workout snack is more lemon blueberry bread. We tried adding some lemon juice this time, and honestly I think it tasted no different. It’s my current favorite lemon blueberry recipe though!

7:40: Leave for 8am Crossfit. Love the 8am time. It doesn’t require what I would consider getting up early!

8:00: Crossfit. The WOD was a doozy. 2 15 minute workouts of every minute on the minute, which means that each move is completed every minute. Ideally you would have about 15-20 seconds of rest each minute, but it didn’t entirely work that way. This was a LONG one.

I love my new Nike Crossfit shoes, but there’s a defect and the sole is coming off (I’ve had them less than 2 weeks). I need to contact Nike and send them back. It’s on the long to-do list of things put off until life is less crazy!

9:00: Breakfast in the car. I wanted to mix up my yogurt today, so I added vanilla Progenex protein powder and cocoa powder. The verdict? Pretty good. But I think that anyone who likes the taste of artificial sweeteners/stevia is 1. lying or 2. wrong.

I did feel really recovered with all the protein though. I also had some pineapple. It came in my fruit and cheese of the month shipment, and I brought it home on Monday to cut. It’s delicious and sweet!

9:30-10:30: Squirrel watching. This is why I ate in the car. I go straight to a local hiking trail to observe squirrels for an hour. For one of my classes, I have to observe a wild animal 2 hours a week, and because I have a deep connection to squirrels, I chose ground squirrels. We are doing a research project on the behavior of our animal of choice, and I’m honing in my research topic.

Today, I worked on tweaking my ethogram, now that I have a better idea of what I want to study. An ethogram is a detailed list of all of an animal’s behaviors.

I’m convinced my 2 hours of squirrel watching is going to make me tan.

10:30: Hydrate! It was a warm one today so I wanted to make sure I got some fluids after sitting in the sun for an hour. I sipped on some sparkling water while finishing up some reading for a class.

11-11:45ish: Get ready for the day, more leisurely than normal because I had extra time.

11:45: Hash. For my house, every week we are required to help set up one meal, and mine is Tuesday lunch.

12:00: Lunchtime! Today was a good one. Veggie stir fry+crispy rice noodle salad, with chicken.

I also had some frozen fruit (since this is WIAW after all).

12:40: Work on my resume. I’m applying for jobs, and my advisor had some feedback on my resume, which I am working on incorporating.

1:30-3: Class! This is actually funny. This was my 2 person lab animal enrichment class, and we spent the day making an ethogram for lab bunnies, for our research project for that. What are the odds I would be making 2 ethograms in one day, for different classes? #biomajor

3:15: Afternoon snack! I grabbed a bite of gluten free pasta salad…

A few of the biggest blueberries ever…

…And then a S’mores Luna and pineapple. I was opposed to the new formula of the S’mores flavor, but it might be growing on me (although the old formula is definitely better, I may be able to tolerate the new). The new S’mores flavor is super crumbly though.

The rest of the afternoon was spent relaxing, taking a brief nap, and sorting laundry in preparation of a much overdue load.

5:30-6:15: Spin! I’ve been going to a local studio 1x/week since I’m currently teaching one class a week. (Although I am subbing an extra this week.) It helps keep me inspired! I found an instructor I like, and it’s fun.

I wore my fun pants, AKA BRIGHT blue (although you can’t tell here). I can’t teach in them because they have a thin waistband, and I have to clip the mic to my pants and they just wouldn’t stay up :/

6:30: Dinner!

I got the last piece of GF pumpkin bread, which was super exciting. For the actual meal, I had swordfish (eaten with ketchup), chickpea salad, corn on the cob, and Greek salad.

I also had a bit of vanilla ice cream (unpictured).

7:15: Throw laundry in (finally), make a couple more resume edits, start typing up this post.

8:00 Dinner #2/Snack

Pineapple, GF pasta salad, roasted sweet potatoes.

8->on: Folding laundry, making a spin playlist (see below), finishing this post, and then schoolwork. I still have 2 animal behavior papers to read and a short write up about my squirrel project. It’s looking to be a longish night, so I’ll wrap up here, but hopefully I’ll be in bed by midnight! (It’s 9:30 as I finish this.)