Day in the Life Fall 2015

Date: October 29, 2015

Author: astottler

Hello! I’ve been wanting to do another day in the life post for a little while now, but I was too crazy busy to even document things. Now that midterms are over, I’ve had a little more time to breathe! Today actually ended up being a much lore key day than normal-let’s dive in!

5:45am: Wake up. My alarm isn’t for 20 minutes. I probably need more sleep but eh. Get out of bed 10 minutes later.

Start getting ready for Crossfit. Pre-Crossfit snack is Vanilla Cherry Bread from my freezer supply.

Plus gummy vitamins (of various types-I’m not overdosing!)

6:40: Leave for Crossfit which starts at 7.

It’s quite nippy out this morning. I’m not ready for those 30 degree mornings in the gym…

The workout today was a sprint workout that knocked us all out. Every 9 minutes we did the following: 150m sprint, 3 power cleans (for me-snatches for everyone else), 5 burpee box jumps, and 15 calorie row. We did this 5 times through. I finished each round between 3-3:20, so there was rest but man. The good news is that I did the heaviest cleans since my shoulder (85#) and it was no problem at all!

8:20ish-arrive back at the house. Crossfit ran a bit late today.

Pull some Halloween decorations from my car. How cute is this?

Then-breakfast. Here’s a look at the house fridge:

I grab a bite of leftover risotto because it’s delicious (several other bites occurred throughout the day) and because #carbs.

The main post-workout replenishment was fate yogurt with pumpkin butter. Perfect combo of protein+carbs.

8:45: Shower and get ready for the day.

Yes, I have pumpkin spice chapstick, and yes it’s fantastic.

9:15: Leave for my fake class. What’s that? When I dropped my Tues/Thurs 9am I decided to spend that time camped out at a coffeeshop or otherwise being productive. Usually I work on Microbio, but today was some reading for my Native American Literature class. Sidenote-this is clearly not a literary blog because #biomajor, but I want to post about this book at some point. Sometimes I’ll get decaf coffee, but I’m starting to come off my acid-reducer stomach meds and don’t think I need the acidity. Instead I bring the other half of my bottle of Kevita.

I spent 50 minutes there. And since this is DITL here’s my outfit. It’s kind of a big deal that I’m wearing jeans because I almost never do-I hate biking in them-but I was feeling them today.

10:25-Leave for first real class of the day.

10:30-11:50 Exercise Physiology. Today is gluconeogenesis and hormones for blood glucose control (which are actually one of my favorite things in all of bio-besides cows of course).

When I come out, I see that the leaves have turned more since Tuesday!

12: Lunch back at the house. Today I have cabbage stuffed with ground chicken, a couple of potatoes, and salad with pears. Plus avocado!

12:40-1:45 Lunch is finished but I spend time talking to my friend who ended up coming for lunch. That was my main nap time but oh well.

1:45-2:45 Eat a Luna bar, finish up some reading, and take a 25 minute power nap. My naps are necessary before my next class because it’s just that time of day. Grab another bite of risotto and a few chocolate covered raisins on the way out.

3-4:20: Native American Literature Class

4:30-5 Watch part of an episode of Grey’s Anatomy (I just started season 6). I’m supposed to carve pumpkins with my dorm and a friend, but no word from her yet.

5:00: Give up on my friend and go down to carve a pumpkin. She eventually comes. I love the smell of pumpkin-officially fall!

6:00: Dinnertime! I had vegetarian meatloaf, mashed potatoes, brussels sprouts, and glazed carrots.

Plus the insides of a key lime freezer pie, which was pretty melty.

7:00: I stayed with my friend until she finished her pumpkin, and then took one for the team to light our pumpkins in true college fashion for a picture. I stuck my phone inside the pumpkin. Worth it.

7:15: It’s been a long week, so I decide it’s finally time to watch Back to the Future II. (Because 2015-so weird!)

9:15-9:35: Start this blog post!

Then a meeting with my RA, most likely followed by some reading for my classes!

What did you do today?

Halloween Party

Date: November 4, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

This post is definitely a bit late. Also, I’m entering Day 4 without a voice. I think that’s impressive! Anyways, the party! I’m obsessed with holidays, so I was really excited to be hosting a party this year!

In all honesty, I had no idea how many people would show up. We ended up having a great turnout! I mostly want to blog about the party because of the awesome refreshments.

In terms of snacks, the only think I made from scratch was popcorn balls. This was SUCH a struggle. The balls are made of popcorn, vanilla, marshmallow, and butter, plus some candy corn, just for fun!

The first batch of popcorn I burned. Fail. No fire alarms were set off at least! Then, the only microwave safe bowl we had was a cereal bowl…to melt an entire bag of marshmallows. I also had the worst time forming the balls-you have to grease your bands before forming them, and while I did do this, I guess I didn’t do it enough and I COULD NOT get the marshmallow off my hands!

And then I made the mistake of using said hands to pick up candy corn…and then the candy corn completely stuck to my hands too! Despite the difficulty, the end result was delicious!

And now the rest of the food. We had ghost shaped chips!

And of course plenty of candy.

Here are some pics of the decorations. Excuse the blur, but you get the idea!

I think the most exciting part though was the punch. Of course, I had to go all out!

I wish I had gotten a better picture, but we had dry ice for the punch bowl! FYI for anyone doing something similar-the dry ice freezes over quickly. And then the entire punch freezes over. The punch ended up being a slushie which was cool, and I had to intermittently put in and take out the dry ice. So fun though!

So what was I?

I know, shocking, right? I was in full Giants-spirit mode on Friday!

Here’s my sis and her bf in their pirate costumes.

So adorable.

The party was so, so much fun. My best friend from high school visited me too, so I ended up seeing almost all of my favorite people! Another fun tidbit-I made a playlist for the party that included a random Halloween themed CD to which the track names didn’t appear on iTunes so I had no idea what was really on it. The Scooby Doo theme song is great party music, right? Haha, totally was not expecting that!

Overall, I could not have asked for our little Halloween party to have gone any better!

What did you dress up as for Halloween?

Freaking Out

Date: October 1, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

So, I’ve been freaking out a lot lately.

First, I freaked out over pumpkins. And of course pumpkin products. And while I’m mentioning that, I tried a pumpkin Oreo! It was ok. It didn’t really taste pumpkin-y to me but it wasn’t bad. It tasted like cinnamon graham crackers.

Then, I freaked out over this box my roommate brought in.

Yep, it’s the start of persimmon season! OMG. These are still very early but some are ripe now likely due to the drought. You guys. These are amazing. My roommate lives in farm country and brought back a ton last winter. I probably ate 4 a day. Obsessed.

Now, I’m freaking out over post-season baseball. The game is still going so I don’t want to jinx anything but GO GIANTS! I’m watching alone in my dorm lounge and I screamed so loudly when the grand slam was hit! I’m seriously so happy right now. Fingers crossed this game keeps going well. I’m a huge Giant’s fan and one of my summer highlights was seeing the Giants play in DC.

(AHHHH ANOTHER BASE HIT AND RUN AS I WRITE THIS!!!)

In other news, it’s October! Yay! I’m also obsessed with fall/holidays. My friends and I are thinking of throwing a Halloween party and I’M SO EXCITED! (Sensing a theme here?)

It’s also officially time to bring out the candy bowl.

In other, other news, who celebrated National Coffee Day? I started Tuesday morning with a beautiful latte (and proceeded to be on the edge of over caffeinated. I have zero tolerance now.)

And then that evening, my sister and I had a coffee date and took advantage of free coffee (in honor of National Coffee Day). I most definitely got decaf.

In terms of food, breakfasts have been yogurt bowls. This one had plain yogurt, maple sunflower seed butter (from the Farmer’s Market), and blueberries.

I also made it to the dining hall for lunch yesterday, and had a panini and salad.

And then today, I had class straight through lunch so in the afternoon, I stopped by a cafe and picked up a turkey, cranberry, and brie sandwich.

And my first pumpkin product of fall (I think). This appeared to be a pumpkin and carrot muffin.

In terms of fitness, yesterday evening was Crossfit, where we worked on cleans, and then did the following WOD:

15 minute AMRAP:

5 db push press

5 front squat (I used 95#)

200m run

12 pull ups

Then, this morning I was up bright and early for 7am Crossfit because it looked like a good workout and there was no way I was missing the game this evening for Crossfit.

The conditioning portion was 3 rds:

400m run

21 wall balls

18 push press

15 sit ups

It was a great way to start the day!

In terms of life, I can’t promise how much I’ll be blogging in the near future. I’m taking computer science this quarter for the first time, and it’s quite time intensive. Or more specifically, after coding for 4 hours straight hours, the last thing I want to do is spend more time on the computer. It’s bad. Once I’m working on something, I literally cannot stop. I dragged myself away last night after 4 straight hours to go to Crossfit, and when I got up I could barely see straight! I think this past assignment took me 12 hours. And that’s only the first assignment. Soo we shall see.

Also, my race was supposed to be this weekend. While seeing the emails makes me a little sad, I don’t regret the decision at all. My feet feel 1000x better and I have made plans that should make up for it!

Have you taken CS? Any advice?

Who’s excited for October? Baseball team you’re rooting for?

Workout Log #1 and Still Eating All the Fall Things

Date: October 31, 2013

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

I hope everyone had a fabulous Halloween! I’m currently taking a study break. I’ve been studying HARD for Bio. I actually feel much more confident about the material and life now than I did after a mini meltdown I may or may not have had earlier today. I actually opted out of flag football for…you guessed it-studying! I’m kind of bummed I missed it because we only have 4 regular season games, but I did get a lot done, so there’s that. Before getting to some eats as of late, I thought I’d post a little workout log for the week. This week is a little bit different than normal because I’m not following any sort of running schedule, but I will starting next week, so ~~if we make it there~~ when we get there I’ll go over that with you guys! My schedule varies a lot week to week-it depends on what workouts are what days for Crossfit-I love that they post the week’s workouts so you can pick and choose. This week was a little lighter on the workout front though because I had more going on. I’ve also been trying to squeeze in one on my own spin workout in preparation for certification, but as you’ll see this week, that doesn’t always happen.

Workouts for Week of 10/28

Monday: AM- easy pace 5 mile hill run

-nothing too crazy, but I wanted to keep my running going a little bit in preparation for Saturday’s long run

PM- Crossfit: Strength was clean and jerks with a front squat

WOD: 300 jump ropes

30-20-10 kettlebell swings/ sit ups

300 jump ropes

I felt the jump ropes in my calves 2 days later!

Tuesday: AM- 45 minute spin class plus 1 mile treadmill run

-I wanted to get a mile in at a decent pace. It was harder than I expected. I have a lot of work to do before attempting to PR my 5k!

PM- Crossfit Strength was 3 rep max push press-I got to 100 pounds, and 2 reps at 105.

WOD: 10 minute ladder (3-6-9-12…)

Push press/pull up

OW. Can I just say, OW. My shoulders are STILL super sore from doing a million and three push presses. I had every intention of working on clean and jerks Wednesday morning, but nothing overhead is going to happen for a looong time. My abs are even sore.

Wednesday: AM- Lifting on my own. I worked on dead lifts and cleans. I set a few goals for November, and some of those include PRing on my cleans and deadlifts, so those will be one of my bigger focuses. I also did some rowing and weighted planks.

PM- I had every intention of practicing a spin class, but I was so sleep deprived I couldn’t see straight, much less make up a class on the go. I ended up calling it quits after about 25 minutes and going to my dorm to take a nap. The good news is I still worked up a pretty good sweat, which I take as a good sign for my ability to make up a spin workout.

PM- Pumpkin carving! That counts as a workout, right…?

Thursday: AM- Crossfit. Strength was practicing Turkish Get Ups. I’ve done something similar in the past, which turned out to be more like half of a Turkish Get Up, but the movements still felt pretty intuitive. I was even able to try it with a (light) barbell, which is hard because you have to balance it with one hand.

WOD: 12 Minutes as many rounds as possible:

6 squats

12 weighed sit ups (overhead)

200 m run

I actually ended up getting the second most rounds! Go figure.

PM ~~Flag Football~~

Friday: Likely rest, maybe some abs or yoga

Saturday: Long run-we’ll see how long it actually turns out. I have a specific number in mind but we’ll see.

Sunday: Probably rest, maybe take a tour of the NEW GYM OPENING ON CAMPUS TOMORROW. I’m so excited-it’s supposed to be super nice, and it will have an actual spin studio (not just some bikes thrown in the corner of the weight room…) and nice spin bikes that actually show speed. The current gym is literally right next to my dorm, and the new one is way across campus, so I probably won’t go there a ton besides for spin, but I’m hoping the current gym will be half as crowded! Also, I know the new gym will be having spin classes on top of the ones that are still going on at the old gym, so maybe this is an awesome opportunity since I’m getting certified soon?

Ok enough exercise talk. Let’s move on to the good stuff, some food from the past few days.

I think I put a little too much weight in the prophetic abilities of the amount of milk foam in my cappuccino. Yesterday’s? AMAZING. TONS of milk foam-going to be a great day. Today’s? Not so much.

Someone shook my kombucha! Speaking of which, I need to get more…

Cottage cheese, spinach, and pesto- #strangebutgood or just #strange? I’m going to go with the latter-this was way too salty. Not a fan.

Love.

Mystery bread as a study snack.

Pumpkin soup take 2! This was really good! The pumpkin soup was kind of boring plain, so one of the twins suggested I add rice to it. I loved the idea! I went to the dining hall in search of brown rice, but all they had was a mushroom barley mix, which was absolutely perfect! I also added some grilled chicken and spinach-YUM.

The other day my mom brought me some pants from home and dropped them off in my car-but she really is the best-she also thought to bring me some other clothes-which I discovered lat last night as I was trying to muster up the energy to do laundry. The best care packages are the ones that let you put off laundry another day. But anyways, she clearly know me way too well because she included tons of dried fruit.

This coconut was really delicious! I’ve never had YOUNG dried coconut!

But she also left me THIS.

A caramel apple! WAY better than Halloween candy!

I wanted some protein on the side-clearly it was not overkill to eat a caramel apple with apple butter, right?

Cottage cheese. Apple butter. Sunflower seed butter. Perfection. I’ve actually hopped off the pumpkin train-I’m ready to move on to other fall items-apples, cranberry bread, and (soon) gingerbread. My roommate and I are currently drowning in apples from our CSA box. She brought a slow cooker, so we’re planning on chopping a bunch up and throwing them in there with some apple pie spice. Which would be awesome on yogurt. I’ve been wanting plain yogurt so much lately, and I don’t have any! Sad.

My study buddy! Filled with chai tea. I was trying to decide if I should use almond milk or water to brew my tea in. Then I realized I’d have to get up and walk all the way down the hall to the bathroom for water. Guess which I decided to use?

Spinach buddies! I was actually planning on going to the dining hall for dinner…and then I was browsing twitter and saw on the local news that my University has had some horribly outbreak of a “mystery illness,” some type of food poisoning and probably norovirus from the food at one of our dining halls. 51 students were sick, and some hospitalized. Umm, no thank you-I’ll stick to my room! I’m just mad I had to hear about this on the news-no one told us students about it!

So on that cheerful note, I shall leave you. Have a great day!

What did you do for Halloween? I’d love to live vicariously through all you guys!

How to Do Halloween College Style

Date: October 30, 2013

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hey guys! Now that I don’t have any super pending due dates, and it’s not super late at night, as promised, I’m getting a little more creative with today’s post. Just a note-clearly when I’m super frustrated with my homework and Apple’s STUPID version of excel, the best thing to do is blog.

So, without further ado-here is how you do Halloween-COLLEGE style.

1. Make your muscles scream with this workout!

This is definitely a shoulder burner. This is a WOD I did over the summer-the prescribed weight is 65# for the thrusters. JELLO ARMS. I swear I had every intention of doing this today, but I did a million and three push pressed last night at Crossfit, so anything overhead was NOT going to happen today. So enjoy this one for me! It’s a quickie-just add to the end of your workout for a little conditioning. Speaking of workouts, I’m thinking of occasionally posting weekly workout logs so you guys get a sense of what I’m doing.

2. Make your friends scream. Don’t shower after said workout. (For the record, I swear I always shower before class!)

3. Want an easy last minute costume idea? Be Frankenstein. Try this workout!

You legs will be so sore I GUARANTEE you’ll be walking like Frankenstein. No costume needed!

Note: Best done 1-2 days before Halloween for maximum Frankenstein-walking effect.

4. How to avoid eating too much candy-alternatice title: learn how to create a black hole. Place outside dorm room in building filled with college students. It’s amazing how fast it disappears.

5. Make a haunted house in your dorm room. Forget scary “eyeballs” and “brains.” My three week old dirty tupperware is MUCH scarier.

6. Dress up as a 12 year old dressed up as a zombie and go trick or treating. (Ok, I’ve never actually done this myself.)

7. Make your own version of a “zombie run.” Why pay money to be in a race with zombies when you can create your own? SImply dress up as a zombie and chase after ~~unsuspecting victims~~ runners. You’re just helping them run faster, right? Best done at dawn or dusk. Or in the complete darkness of night.

8. Use treats to your advantage. Passing out candy to your dorm? Make it count. Last year I passed out these-

On the surface, it clearly made sense since I was a baseball player and the Giants were in the process of winning the World Series. However, I also had the mission of converting everyone to Giant’s fans so this was my way of getting that whole “subliminal mind control” thing to work its magic.

This year? We passed out Halloween candy. We’re clearly trying to break the curve people! Sugar messes with you brain, right? It’s midterm season-I need all the help I can get!

9. Spend all night in the library studying. Which is what I’ll actually be doing. The struggle is real my friends.

At least I have a friendly face to keep me company!

Have a great Halloween everyone!

Are you dressing up? What are you doing for Halloween?