Exploring Knoxville

Date: July 3, 2016

Author: astottler

After a pretty intense week, Friday night I was able to start exploring Knoxville!

Friday night I went to Central Burgers and Taps with some of the people I’ve met while here and their dogs. This is a very dog friendly city, and most places with outdoor seating allow dogs.

Saturday morning began with a Crossfit class!

I hadn’t done any intense exercise in a week, so it felt good to sweat! (And sweat I did—no AC!) We did about 1000 burpees, push ups, wall balls, and ab mat sit ups. Well, maybe not 1000, but over 100 of each! We did a deck of cards workout, where each movement was a deck of cards. The coach let the class choose, and apartment the class is full of masochists, haha! In all seriousness though, the people were SO nice. Some of the most genuinely nice people I’ve met in the Crossfit community. I wasn’t sure I was going to try to do a membership because the class time I can make is 5:30am (ouch), but I was won over!

Next up was a trip to the only gluten free bakery in Knoxville, for their Saturday morning biscuits! Benefit Your Life was a bit of a drive (apparently you can drive 13 miles on the highway and still be in Knoxville?), but totally worth it. I got an egg and cheese biscuit, and a strawberry, banana, orange smoothie.

Plus a chocolate chip cookie for later.

After cleaning up, I enjoyed my lack of schedule by reading a book for an hour or so before heading out to explore the city (i.e. plant my butt in a coffeeshop and work on vet school apps). I headed to K Brew, and had to try their special, a honey lavender latte.

I’m not normally a sweet coffee person, but this was AMAZING. I’m going to have to go back and try their cappuccinos too to really evaluate this coffeeshop!

I ate my cookie while working on apps. Necessary to make them a little bit sweeter. In all seriousness though, having such a low stress and happy environment makes them a lot less stressful.

I was there for about 2 hours before I headed down to Market Square to walk around. Apparently there’s a nice farmer’s market there Saturday mornings!

I then stopped at a salad and sandwich/burger restaurant for a turkey, avocado, and ranch salad.

Followed by frozen custard. Chocolate/vanilla swirl.

This was from Rita’s. Apparently there’s one near my house in CA that I have yet to try, but this was really good! (Shake Shack is better though.)

From there I drove around the area to try and get my bearings and ran some errands, before heading out again with the same people. We played corn holes, which I’m decent at but not as good as you might think, given my pitching background!

Today I have another full day to explore, and after my workout, I’m not sure what I want to do!

Have you ever been to Knoxville? Recommendations for me?

Thunder from Down Under+Last Post from This Side of the Mississippi Round 2

Date: June 26, 2016

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Guys. It is currently Saturday night (this post will go up Sunday while I am in the air), and I leave for TN tomorrow. My flight LEAVES at 5am. Ouch. This is my last post from this side of the Mississippi! Recently on time hop, I came across my “Last Post from This Side of the Mississippi” from my summer in DC, so I guess this is round 2! I definitely want to blog about my experience in TN, but understand that I can’t talk about what I’m doing due to confidentiality reasons, so expect more of the usual food and fitness+weekend adventures!

This week has been crazy, trying to do everything before I go.

You may be wondering about the first part of the title of this post. My parents and I went to “Thunder from Down Under” Tuesday night, aka an Australian Shepherd playgroup at the local dog training/agility facility. Chloe LOVES playing with other dogs, and is a rough player. She hasn’t had the chance to play with a ton of Aussies. This was just the cutest idea! 6 dogs showed up, and Chloe stuck with the same one most of the time. I wish my pictures were less blurry, but crazy dogs=constant motion.

Chloe and her new BFF, Bacon. It was so funny to see all the dogs play and interact with the same behaviors and mannerisms!

About halfway through, they started to get a bit tired! When she gets tired, Chloe tends to just roll on her back and play from the ground.

Thursday was another busy day for me. I started with morning Crossfit. I did cleans for the first time since my stress fracture, 2 months. I was careful and kept it light, but was still sore the next day! My foot felt good during them. I went straight from there to meet my sister for iced coffee.

And then from there, I ran home to pick up Chloe for a walk with my High School friends. I hadn’t driven her in my small car since she has been full grown, and she kept trying to come into the front seat/my lap! She’s too big for that! It was great to see my friends.

Since my foot injury, I haven’t walked any sizable distance. That plus Olympic lifting that morning was a lot, and my foot was sore the next morning.

I was more than ready for lunch afterwards!

Microwave quesadilla, salad with Greek Feta dressing, and chicken.

More food: Fig and Goat cheese salad.

Microwaved gluten free blondie with caramel sauce and frozen yogurt.

Friday, my dad and I went to the Giant’s game. Food, as always was the highlight. Cauliflower flatbread with truffle oil for me, plus a cucumber and feta salad split with my dad.

Plus some of my dad’s hot fudge sundae.

We ended up pulling out a win by inches…it was not pretty there at the end!

As per usual, it was freezing. I had a long sleeve, sweatshirt, north face, and scarf, plus we had a blanket, and I was still so cold! I feel like I need to soak up the cold though before heading to TN!

It was fireworks night, so we stayed after the game to watch. While we waited, the birds swooped in!

And then, it was time for fireworks. It was a great show—the fireworks were really sparkly and pretty, plus we were really close.

The next morning, I drove down to my school Crossfit for the last time. I’ve been sad for a while about this day. This Crossfit has really become my family over the past 3 years. Through crazy school stress, illnesses, and two major injuries, it’s always been there. I spent so much time there over the past 3 years, and it really was one of the highlights of my college experience. While I still argue that sometimes you regret a workout (some types of soreness are brutal), I knew that whenever I went in, no matter what else was going on, I would leave feeling better. I think I’ve been there in every imaginable mental state. The workout was a great one to end on. A LONG partner workout, similar to the previous week but worse because of the addition of wall balls.

2 Sets

AMRAP 5 Rest 1

Max Assault Bike Cals
16 Alternating DB Snatch

AMRAP 5 Rest 1

Max Rower Cals
20 Wall Ball

AMRAP 5 Rest 1

AMRAP 5 Toes to Bar + 5 Burpee
5 Pt Shuttle Sprint

For the final grouping, I subbed 25 kettle bell swings for the shuttle run, and push ups for the burpees. KB swings combined with toes to bar KILLED my grip! It’s funny; I haven’t done many toes to bar lately (not for any good reason), but they have still gotten WAY stronger for me since doing so much ab work while my foot was in a boot. I guess it does carry over!

At the end of class, I said my goodbyes which I tried my best (and failed) to keep it together for. I’m really going to miss that place.

After a failed errand, lunch at home was rotisserie chicken, avocado toast, and fruit (pictures is the nectarine, plus cherries and some pear).

We had more errands to run that afternoon to prepare for my trip, but on the way, I wanted to get froyo. We ended up at Menchies. I love how they label all their nutrition info+allergens. And that they have sample cups readily available! I got some toasted marshmallow and some chocolate frozen yogurt, which I topped with hot fudge, strawberry,s and milk chocolate.

Dinner at home was a good one. Cheese soufflés (it’s a Cooking Light recipe that we’ve made quite a few times over the years).

Plus steamed artichokes and roasted Japanese yams.

For dessert+plain snacks, I made some more sweet potato zucchini bread, but with a few changes. I didn’t have quite enough sweet potato, so I threw in half a banana, and to change up the flavor a bit, I reduced the spices and put in butterscotch extract. It was a hit in my house!

And with that, from this side of the Mississippi, that’s all she wrote.

Where is your favorite place to go in the summer?

Day in the Life Spring 2016: Classes

Date: April 25, 2016

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hello! I mentioned last week I wanted to do another DITL post for a day that I had classes, so I recorded Monday. I know I’m a day early, but I’m still linking up to WIAW because this included all my food.

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Day in the Life, Monday 4/25/16:

7:00 alarm

Time to start getting ready for my workout!

Preworkout meal is lemon blueberry bread.

7:40: Leave for Crossfit.

8:00: Crossfit. Today’s workout is a 1RM strict press and 1RM push press. I had near/on my previous max for strict, and failed 110# for push. For push, my max is 120# but that was pre-shoulder injury. Honestly, my shoulder has been a little angry lately thanks to lots of pull ups and presses last week. It gets like this when I work it a lot and is strong again when it gets a break.

My good shoulder was feeling a bit wonky on the thrusters so I took them slow and did 55#. Since TTB is my current movement to work on, I spent most of my time with them.

Since I had to send my shoes back, I’m back to my old Reeboks.

9:15: Return to my dorm for breakfast! I’m pretty hungry this morning so I add cereal to my yogurt bowl, finishing off the bag of Gluten Free Maple Heritage Crunch. This is my new favorite yogurt topping, but the vanilla flavor is ever better. Also featured is homemade reduced sugar raspberry jam courtesy of my aunt, and sunbutter.

->10:15: Get ready for class, clean up, and dress up like the normal human I sometimes pretend to be.

10:30-12:00: Genetics. We get out 20 minutes early, which is really nice!

This is where I should mention something that is currently weighing on my mind. My foot. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this much, but it’s been hurting lately in a new and interesting way. And it’s getting worse. I just have a bad feeling about it. During our break in class, I made myself an appointment with a podiatrist, and luckily I was able to get a time early Tuesday morning. More about this later in the post, but I’m glad I can get it taken care of ASAP.

12:00: Lunchtime! Leftover soup+sweet potato tortilla chips. Super aesthetic, I know.

12:30-1:30: Bio library to start studying for next week’s test, because it was too cold outside! I think at least half of the people in the Bio library were asleep, so I guess it’s that time of year.

Oh, and here’s what I look like:

1:30-2:20: Evolution and Ecology of Animal Behavior

2:30-4: Human Behavioral Biology (We got out 20 min early.)

I had half a chocolate cupcake Luna bar in class, and was STARVING. This bar is so exciting for me guys. First time trying it. Still hoping I won’t react to the cashews. Fingers crossed!

4:15: Back at the dorm. I am hungry again so grab a few pop chips with strawberry cream cheese.

4:30: In the car to drive home for dinner+Biochem. I decide to listen to my audiobook, The Husband’s Secret. I’m near the end. I actually started it last August (what), but picked it up again recently with my long runs for the Cherry Blossom race.

5:00: Arrive home to my little Psycho Pup. (Disclaimer: I forgot to take pictures so I asked my parents to send me some after I left.)

5:15: Once she calms down enough, we sit down to dinner. Blueberry oatmeal muffins from the Nancy Clark Sports Nutrition book, plus a new and super interesting soup. This is Colombian Chicken Soup, and if you’re looking to switch up your soup rotation, I highly recommend this one. It had all kinds of interesting flavors and toppings. It was broth based with potato, chicken, asparagus, and corn on the cob. You then top it with yogurt, capers, rice, cilantro, and fresh avocado. YUM.

I also had a few bites of homemade chocolate.

6:10: Leave for Biochem

6:30-9:30: Biochem. I had trouble focusing for the first part because I was really worried about my foot. Like I said before, I just have a bad feeling about it. I’ve never had pain here before, and for some reason “stress fracture” keeps coming to the front of my mind. The place where it hurts, there is really not much but bone to go wrong. Like I said, I’m anxious for answers. A quick google search for recovery time for a stress fracture also included common running fractures. Guess where it hurts?

In the odyssey of a 3 hour Biochem class, I moved from denial to freaking out to anger to acceptance. So I guess we’ll find out tomorrow. I’m just grateful this is happening post-Cherry Blossom and Crossfit Open.

Snack at the midway point:

10:00: Finally arrive back at the house.

I’m not in the mood to eat, but I’m hungry so I have a piece of chicken and a couple pop chips.

And some sips of aloe juice:

10:20ish: Start typing up this post.

Is that sufficiently meta?

11:00-12:00 (?): Probably finish this post, print out some reading for the doctor’s office, and possibly start Wednesday’s spin playlist.

Have you ever broken a bone? Or gotten a stress fracture?

Day in the Life: Spring 2016/ WIAW

Date: April 19, 2016

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

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?

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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.)

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Ripped Hands That One Time

Date: April 14, 2016

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Oh my gosh guys. My life is insane right now. I don’t know which way is up. I don’t even remember the last time I blogged. I wanted to blog Easter, and that still hasn’t happened!

This quarter is insane. I spend half the time feeling like I’m in way over my head, which makes me angry because I’m supposed to be enjoying my last spring! And I spend the other half of the time (ok, maybe more like 25%) thinking, ok, I’ve totally got this, I can manage my time. Seeing as I’m currently blogging, I’m sitting in that 25% right now, after just about finishing my take home test due Monday. This is my schedule: GRE Saturday, take home test due Monday, essay due Monday, Biochem test Monday, normal reading due Monday. ARGH. The awful thing is that unfortunately this is definitely not my only Monday with those 4 things! This quarter is going to be the death of me. But right now I’m managing. And by right now, I mean in this exact moment.

Another current bane of my existence is that my university shut off my Wifi last week, and I had to go through a 10 hour encryption process to get it back. And TBH, it’s not worth doing that on my phone, so I’m currently not on Wifi on my phone, which means photos don’t transfer to iCloud very well. Blerch.

So Thursday. I had a super awesome Crossfit workout that morning. I was able to do kipping pull ups for real, no band, stringing them together (ok, in 3’s) during the WOD, which is a huge first for me. Then we did 100 weighted hanging knee raises. Then I decided to do one more extra pull-up, just for fun. And on that one bonus pull up, I tore the #@%$#$ out of my hand. I’ve never exactly understand hand tearing before—I’ve gotten blisters, etc. but in this case, my callus tore off my viable skin. Yuck. I had to wrap my hand to be functional in life.

But pull-ups, am I right??

Here are some Thursday meals.

Mushroom garlic soup with GF grilled cheese for lunch.

A really weird taco, essentially filled with lettuce, tomatoes, and hominy. But it had avocado, so of course it was great. Side note: I really love hominy! For those unfamiliar with it, it’s corn that is sort of soaked/sprouted.

Thursday night, I made the questionable decision of going to Senior Night. Questionable because #sleep.

We ended up taking an Uber because the bus line was insane. It was a super fun night, but I didn’t make it to bed until 3ish.

I got up earlier than necessary Friday morning to run. While that may seem like a questionable decision, 1. it wakes me up and 2. I woke up before my alarm anyway because I can’t sleep in. Whoopee. Friday night I had sorority recruitment until 1am, and 5 hours of classes leading up to it. The prospect was daunting. Friday morning was turning out to not be my morning at all either. First, after my run, I managed to lock my car keys in my trunk. I didn’t think that was possible. Then, on the way to class, I totally wiped out on my bike. My hand was still wrapped up and beat up from pull ups, so I couldn’t grip my handle bars well with that hand. It was raining, and my good hand slipped off my handlebars. There was no way to go but now. I landed on my hands and knees, drenching myself, but reasonably unscathed. Then I got to be the hot mess showing up to section applying all kinds of bandaids, with a big wet spot on my leg.

My mom sent me these pictures after I complained, haha!

Luckily, before my last class I was able to sneak in a little baby nap. I had to leave pretty early for class because the hand I landed on (i.e. my formerly good hand) was bruised and scraped up, and my wrist was a bit sore, so I had to walk to class because I couldn’t hold the handle bars. I never walk, so this was kind of a big deal!

After 8 long hours of sorority recruitment, I ended up staying up until 4ish talking and joking with my friends. I think we were all a little slap happy. But man, that knocked me out.

Saturday, I spent the morning resting up, and then tested out my new Crossfit shoes. I’m trying the Nikes, and so far I like them a lot! Although I do worry I have 1/2 a size too big.

I lifted on my own, to the best of my torn hand’s ability. I did back squats, deadlifts (though my hand wouldn’t let me go as heavy as I hoped), single leg deadlifts, calf raises, and weighted planks.

Then, I headed home to get my Senior Formal dress (!!!) altered. And to eat.

Basic wrap: corn tortilla with grilled chicken, cheese, and pilothouse farms caesar (I’m officially a fan of Bolthouse farms). Plus a side salad.

I stayed home for several hours to bust out a cover letter that had been hanging over my head.

Sunday was spent catching up on work and going to a spin class.

On Monday, this dinner was noteworthy. The soup of the week was a spinach and goat cheese, and I was a huge fan! It reminded me a bit of the Greek spinach and cheese pastries, Spanakopita. The recipe calls for 24 cups of spinach! And makes about 4-8 servings of soup…

We added some chicken for a little staying power. I really liked this one; it’s crazy how versatile soup can be!

Also noteworthy: these. Blueberry and fig. YUM.

Monday was also my puppy’s first birthday! So here’s a little throwback.

Tuesday morning after Crossfit, I had breakfast with a view.

For one of my classes this quarter, I’m observing squirrels 2 hours every week, and this is my location of choice, so I packed some yogurt to enjoy while watching the wildlife.

One of my subjects.

This was a delicious lunch. Chicken salad with grapes and sunflower seeds, roasted root veggies, and sautéed mushrooms.

Tuesday night, I made it out to another baseball game. Despite my crazy schedule, I’m so glad I did. I think my biggest regret at Stanford is not going to more baseball games.

I packed a wrap for dinner, so dinner was with a view as well.

It was a good game; we CRUSHED SJ State.

And that brings us to todayish. The only few noteworthy things I can think of:

Apparently my new Crossfit shoes are magic because I can now string together double unders. I usually do double-single-double-single, and only got like 3 doubles straight through ever. In the workout I busted out the full set of 21. What?? Where did that come from??
I was super inspired for this week’s spin class. Lots of new music, and requests from my students! Sadly, everyone who requested something was not there to enjoy it, but I think everyone who was there had a good time!
I got a rabies vaccine today. #prevetproblems Just to be clear, it’s preventative, not because I’ve been exposed! Also, the process took a while, and I was waiting by myself for about 15 minutes with a detailed handout about potential side effects. And I’m sort of a hypochondriac so that was fun. So far, so good though!
I have a wild Friday night planned. Biochem studying. Maybe I’ll get a little wild and throw in some GRE vocab.
I got a pineapple. In my fruit and cheese of the month box! Pretty sure I’ll need to bring it home to cut because it’s going to laugh at my silly dorm knives.
And now I think it’s time for bed. WHEW. Let the craziness continue! (Except please don’t. Ugh.)

What is your favorite fruit?

I’m currently pretty excited that it’s mango season!