Day in the Life: Winter 2019 (Second Year Vet Student)

Date: February 27, 2019

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

5:20am: Alarm goes off

Jackson is always super snuggly in the mornings.

I get ready to teach spin and eat a handful of Cheerios.

5:50am: Out the door

I have to get there early to set up.

6:15am: Class begins! It’s a surprisingly big class for early morning, during midterms, in a huge rainstorm.

7:00am: Class ends and I clean up. I always mix this electrolyte powder into 16 ounces of water and drink it right away because I really struggle with hydration after these morning classes.

7:20: Return home and make breakfast. I have some of my current favorite crackers and a protein smoothie with Chocolate Quest protein, a frozen banana, cocoa powder, and soy milk.

Animals have no rules in this house.

After breakfast, I pack my lunch for the day…with plenty of kitty help.

Again, no rules….

Then I get ready for class.

Right before leaving, I have a couple squares of 100% chocolate for a little caffeine boost.

8:45: Out the door!

9-9:50: Lecture on large animal viruses that are reportable to the USDA (meaning they’re serious enough the government wants to monitor them).

10-10:45: Group work on a group problem set. We actually have a full 2 hours allotted for this, but we finished pretty quickly! I decide to run home and take a nap with the extra time. I also get a spin sub request for that evening, and I accept. I like subbing evenings because I have a lot of friends that like to come to my classes but don’t like the early ones.

11: Crawl into bed with my nap buddy.

11:30: I didn’t actually sleep but I feel a little refreshed so I start typing up this blog post.

12: Lunch that I packed earlier, but since I’m home I get to watch an episode of Parks and Rec.

More veggie chips and a salad with chicken, pear, and blueberry chèvre. I also have a piece of dark chocolate.

I then studied a little bit with some kitty help.

(Which turned into kitty playtime.)

12:40: Leave for class again.

1-3: We had a group problem based learning session with a faculty member. The class we’re in right now is Infectious Disease, so the case was related to that.

3: Return home and eat a snack.

I study for a little bit, and then it’s time for spin round 2!

4:50: Leave for spin.

Yes, that’s the same shirt. Yes, I had to do a quick load of laundry at lunch.

5:15: Teach class! It was an awesome turnout, with a ton of my classmates! Vet students come to my classes a lot, especially when they’re not quite so early!

6:15: Return home and restart hydrating! I do another electrolyte packet, but I mix it with sparkling water. Fun fact: it fizzed like crazy and overflowed, so maybe not the best idea. Delicious though! Last time I taught a double day I rehydrated with beer and that was not the best idea I’ve ever had.

While I cook (i.e. throw together a fast and easy dinner), I snack on some carrot sticks and sauerkraut (not together).

6:35: Finally sit down and eat dinner. This is what I lovingly refer to as my Southern Taco salad, or the least authentic taco salad. When I was in Nashville, I ordered a taco salad at a Mexican restaurant and it seemed to be neither taco nor a salad; it was mainly meat and cheese! I made a queso-chicken type of deal with Bolthouse Salsa Ranch, shredded rotisserie chicken, and Mexican cheese, all heated up. I put that on top of lettuce with salsa and guacamole. Not authentic Mexican, but I like it!

I recently got Hulu, and lately I’ve been loving The Resident! I watched an episode with dinner. I consider my TV episode with dinner a non-negotiable, no matter how busy I get.

For dessert, I mixed vanilla Halo Top with a GF toffee cookie and caramel sauce. I mixed up the whole pint, but took a serving and froze the rest.

8:00: Finish up typing up this post. I need to spend some time studying for a test tomorrow so I’m going to sign off here. I might have a light snack later, but I think I’m more focused on hydrating for now. I’ll probably go to bed around 10!

Day in the Life: Fall 2018 (Second Year Vet Student)

Date: November 6, 2018

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

I know, I’ve been a bad blogger. But I did want to squeeze in a day in the life post, so here it is!

5:30am: Kittens don’t understand the time change and start wrestling on my bed.

6:05: I finally get up.

I get ready for morning Crossfit and eat some Cheerios.

I was up earlier than I needed to be so I had plenty of time to snuggle kitties.

6:45am: Leave for Crossfit.

7:00: Crossfit. For strength, the rest of the class did cleans and I did snatches. My wrist has been feeling a ton better but cleans are going to be the last thing I’m able to do. The WOD was a long one.

100 sit ups

400m run

75 push ups

400m run

50 box jumps

400m run

Oof. I did push ups on a box because I am not strong enough and it’s easier only wrist! We ended up finishing class a few minutes late, and then I hit really bad traffic going back, so I was fairly flustered and rushed when I got back!

8:20: Arrive home.

8:25: Sit down to breakfast. I did a 9 mile race this past Sunday, and ever since then I have been so hungry! I was starving and had a few bites of chicken from soup that I made the other night because I knew my breakfast wouldn’t hold me over. This hunger will be a theme of the day, haha! Breakfast is cottage cheese with an apple from my Apple Hill weekend (where I did the race) with sunbutter.

8:45: Leave for class, more or less on time. We have lab today so I’m in scrubs, so thankfully getting ready is pretty quick!

9:00: First class of the day! We just started Reproduction, so I’ll spare you guys pictures.

After my first class, I actually ate a full size 3 Musketeers bar. Someone put out a big box of giant candy bars and I haven’t eaten a full sized candy bar in years, plus I was quickly burning through my breakfast so I just went for it. I only intended to have half but ate the whole thing and don’t regret that at all. I was expecting to feel sick afterwards, but again, my metabolism has been on fire since the race so I was more than hungry at lunch, after another couple of lectures!

12:00: Lunch at home. The handyman was supposed to come and I had a big gap between classes so I went home. On the menu was a big salad with persimmon, deli turkey (I recently started buying nitrite free deli turkey), cranberry goat cheese, and balsamic vinaigrette.

I also had a square of dark chocolate.

I watched an episode of Parks and Rec while eating. I don’t love it yet, but I’m still giving it a chance, and I needed a shorter show.

12:30: Study! With a side of wrestling kitties.

Marie’s current obsession is to climb on my shoulder and bite my hair.

Which usually quickly progresses to this:

1:45: I’m hungry (again) so I have my afternoon snack.

2:20: Take a short study break to start typing up this post.

2:35: Leave for lab.

3-4:30: Anatomy lab! Today is male reproduction.

4:30: Out of lab a little bit early, but it’s already getting dark!

4:45: Arrive home. I’m hungry (shocker) so I pick some veggies out of the soup I made.

Then it’s study time with the two babies!

5:45: Leave for soccer! We have a vet school team in the intramural league. Today’s game was against the 3rd year vet students and we sadly lost in penalty kicks! I still had fun and my ankle is not thrilled with me.

7:30: Finally sit down to dinner with an episode of Netflix ( I just started Riverdale). No matter how busy I get, I consider my Netlfix and dinner time sacred! On the menu is a stir fry of sorts. I microwaved some frozen stir fry veggies and then sautéed up tofu and spaghetti squash (Kind of weird, but sort of like chow mien!) with GF teriyaki sauce and served that on top of my veggies!

For dessert, I had a mini sunbutter cup and a GF snickerdoodle.

8:00: Have a few more Cheerios while icing my ankle.

8:20: Pick out an old spin playlist to teach tomorrow for Sunrise Cycle at 6:15am! I have actually a million old playlists to choose from. I teach 3 classes a week so I definitely don’t make a new playlist each time, but I have so many from years of cycling that no one will ever hear repeats!

8:25-8:30: Finish up this blog post. Before bed I’m going to try to squeeze in a little bit more studying or work on some emails, but on nights before I teach early morning spin, I try to be in bed reading a book and getting sleepy at 9, and asleep before 10!

Day in the Life Summer 2018

Date: July 18, 2018

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

I’ve really tried to do a day in the life for every quarterish while doing this blog, so I wanted to keep that going with my schedule and life here in Nashville! Here’s a semi-typical workday.

5:15am: Alarm goes off

I take my vitamins and snuggle with Jackson.

Throw on clothes and then do a 15ish minute workout in my bedroom. I had screen shotted it a year ago when it was programmed for crossfit, and then it came up on my time hop last week so I gave it a go! I subbed push ups for kettlebell swings. It was nice to get a little sweat on!

5:45: Clean up and go make breakfast. Today I have a flapjack muffin and watermelon.

6:05: Give my roommate’s kitty his pill and feed everyone. Then, I get ready to go. I am actually running a little bit early, so I snuggle Jackson a little bit before I go.

6:40: Leave for work.

7:00 Start work. This morning I’m assisting with surgeries, which mainly consists of prepping patients and anesthesia monitoring for dental procedures. Today we ended up spending a really long time with a patient due to a difficult dental extraction so lunch doesn’t come until 1:30. This is super unusual. Usually lunch is at 12 on the dot. We are sustained by cupcakes—mini bundt cakes from Nothing Bundt Cakes.

In terms of gluten…it variably affects me right now. I didn’t have much issue with brain fog with this, but I did have a mini corn muffin after lunch and that hit me fast and hard with the intense tiredness. So I don’t really get it. I definitely didn’t feel my best from all the sweets today though.

1:30: Eat my packed lunch.

Salad with chicken, nectarine, blueberry goat cheese, and balsamic vinaigrette. Same lunch every day, with some form of GF cracker-y thing on the side. I usually eat lunch outside with a book (unless it’s 100 degrees. Only 90 today).

The snacks I bring for the afternoon are grapes (which I eat right after lunch) and a Luna bar.

2:30: Back to work! I finish some surgery stuff and run various labs, as well as clean. Later on I shadow some, and then do closing duties. I have my Luna bar around 4.

7:10: Off work! I come straight home.

7:20: Greeted at home by my baby!

I start to make my dinner while munching on some crackers.

7:40: Dinner came together super fast because my squash was already cooked. I heated up spaghetti squash with parmesan and garlic, and topped it with marinara sauce and mozzarella. Yum!

I’m currently watching season 14 of Grey’s Anatomy.

Dessert is a chocolate covered greek yogurt bar and a piece of chocolate.

8:30: I still want a little something so I go with a bar.

8:40-9:00: Work on this blog post. After this I’ll probably read and get ready for bed. I’m usually going to sleep around 10. Honestly, this is not my greatest day of food, but for 11 hour workdays it is what it is. Plus I only have a couple of weeks left here, so I’ll enjoy what comes!

Back at it again tomorrow!

What I Ate For a 10 Hour Workday

Date: June 29, 2018

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hello, hello! It’s Friday night here, or so I’m told. I honestly have been really struggling to know which day of the week it is with my schedule! Today is technically my Tuesday? I think? I start late tomorrow though, so I thought I would take some time tonight to recap what I ate today!

Pre-workout: Handful of Berry Cheerios

Workout was 6am Crossfit. We did shoulder presses, and then a WOD with lots of dumbbell snatches and toes to bar. Big progress for me was having no issues with the snatches. Doing these last back home in California, the extra couple of inches closer to the floor with the dumbbell versus the barbell was a big problem, so that’s good!

Post-workout breakfast eaten in the car:

Chocolate milk drink plus some crackers. Can we talk for a second about that fact that Crossfit ended at 7, and I started work at 7:30? I got showered and totally ready to go in 10 minutes. One trick is to do (minimal) eye makeup that’s waterproof before Crossfit. It helps me look somewhat put together!

Lunch:

I’ve had roughly the same salad every day at work, but this was especially amazing. The nectarine was perfectly sweet and ripe, I used the last of my delicious fig balsamic goat cheese, and the chicken was amazing. It’s leftover grilled chicken from Hattie B’s; the original meal will appear in a later recap post but this was awesome.

I also had cotton candy grapes. I first tried these in St. Louis almost 2 years ago and became obsessed. I’ve never seen them in CA. I thought that they MUST have them somewhere here, and went to every grocery store until finally I found them at Publix!

I had to stop into Target to pick up a few things on my lunch break, so I had a few pieces of this:

Snack: I’ve been having a Luna bar every day. I haven’t had the Lemon flavor in a while, and after having it today, I realized that the last few of the Lemon bars I had months ago were probably stale because this was so good!

I was actually really hungry today, so around 4:30 I broke into another Target purchase, one of these new protein bars I found. I used to love ThinkThin bars in the days prior to my weird nut allergies, so I was excited to find a kids bar that didn’t have any! I actually liked this a lot. It didn’t have the weird fake sugar taste of some of the other ThinkThin bars I remember. This reminded me a lot of the Balance Cookie Dough bars I used to like when I was younger! Plus I love having a smaller bar option for when I want just a little something.

Dinner:

Since I’m impatient, I often snack while cooking. Today’s snack was some tzatziki sauce from Taziki’s leftover from some takeout I got earlier in the week, with some crackers.

Dessert:

Mint chip Halo Top.

And then a little bit later, I had some GF crackers with sunbutter.

And that’s a wrap!

Nashville Things

Date: June 11, 2018

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

I’m in Nashville! Yay!

I thought I’d recap what I’ve been up to so far before works starts getting crazy (I work pretty long days). I’m currently blogging from a coffeeshop, the Frothy Monkey, downtown. I have a drink with beet juice and cocoa powder. I didn’t think it had any coffee in it, but I actually am not sure if ti does or not…

I’m definitely not expert on Nashville, but I’m trying to get the most out of my time off!

Sunday was spent mostly settling in. Side note: when I got in Saturday, it was so late nothing was open so I went through the McDonald’s drive through. I got the Southwest salad with grilled chicken and it was actually REALLY good.

I went to Target on Sunday on pretty much bought one of everything. There are just a lot of things necessary to live! I also wanted to spend plenty of time with Jackson on my first day to make sure he was settling in ok.

Yeah, I think he’s fine.

The main event was Sunday afternoon. I researched spin classes in Nashville, and came across Cyclebar, which I’ve heard of. I wanted to go to a class on Sunday, and happened to find that they had an outdoor class at a brewery. Um, sign me up! We got to cycle outside, with a great view of the Nashville skyline. and then, we got a free beer at the brewery!

I also figured this was a step up from drinking alone! It was at Jackalope, and I had the Lovebird beer, which was a strawberry/raspeberry hefeweizen.

Afterwards, I went to dinner at the Frothy Monkey location in 12 South, an area I went with my friend when I visited Nashville a few years ago. (I think I will probably go back there and not come here to the downtown location, just because parking is RIDICULOUSLY expensive here). I got a sandwich with smoked turkey, cheese, and avocado on GF bread, and a salad with citrus vinaigrette.

Afterwards, I walked down the street to Jenni’s ice cream. I was hoping to try their Gooey Butter Cake flavor (#stlouis) but they were out. I “settled” for dark chocolate and salty caramel. You can do two half scoops of different flavors! So this was technically single scoop, but it was huge!

Monday morning I went into the clinic I’m going to work out to do some paperwork and get oriented.

I was home in time for lunch, and discovered a new quick and easy salad combo that apparently I haven’t take a picture of yet. Bolthouse farms Salsa Racnh dressing, deli turkey, and american cheese. The American cheese I got tastes a little cheddary so it works!

Monday afternoon I went to a new Crossfit! I had a comprehensive evaluation of my movements beforehand. I can tell the coaching here is really good. I’ve been to 2 classes so far and they’ve definitely been challenging! It’s really nice to go somewhere different and get pushed, plus it’s smaller so there’s more individual attention. For better or for worse, they have 5am classes. Which might become a thing when I start work at 7am and work until 7:30pm (ouch, we’ll see).

Because I work such long hours, I’m going to try to go as much as I can, when I can. Which means on my days off, I really need to hit it!

After Crossfit, I made myself a giant salad with salsa ranch, corn, tomatoes, Mexican cheese blend, and BBQ chicken.

This is a super easy dinner that will be on repeat this week. I’ve made this before with lime juice and olive oil as the dressing!

Tuesday and Wednesday I had off of work. Tuesday morning was lazy until I went to 11:30 Crossfit. It crushed me. We did RDLs for the strength, which I am definitely feeling now. Followed by box steps ups. I like the accessory strength work that we do as well. I think it’s important! The WOD was a 15 minute AMRAP of 15 cals rowing/15 wall balls/9 burpees. I finished just over 5 rounds. We also do some “cool down” work here, and today it was sideways leg raises which I am also feeling.

That morning, I went to Walmart (I don’t have one near me, but they have some awesome healthy food things! The new Peach Halo Top is fire.) which happened to be near a GF, nut free MUFFIN bakery. The Wild Muffin is a super small shop that specializes in GF muffins, and I’m obsessed because muffins are the superior baked good. I got a lemon blueberry and a pumpkin cheesecake, and they were still warm. They were both gone in a day, and this is going to have to become a weekly occurrence.

After lunch, I went to Radnor Lake to hike the trail around the lake. I figured I should do some outdoor things while it’s still 80s here! It was really beautiful, and the trail around the lake took me about an hour and 10 minutes.

Being outdoors like this feels like summer to me!

When I arrived home, I cleaned myself up and went to a Nashville Sounds baseball game! The minor league team here is the AAA affiliate of the Oakland A’s. The stadium is really nice so it’s a fun time!

Nothing like beer and baseball in the summer!

More to come soon!