Day In The Life + WIAW

This post could also be titled “If I Blogged Every Minute Of The Day” and I figured it would be a funny alternative type of post.  So here we go.  This is my WIAW post combined with a detailed look at a day in the life of busy genetic counseling student.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

5:40am - alarm goes off

5:41am - out of bed

5:48am - out the door, to the gym

5:57am - in the gym, on the elliptical, practicing my prenatal presentation

6:43am - back to the apartment

6:50am - shower time

7:00am - dry off, get dressed (realize my new tailored pants fit great), makeup and hair

7:20am - make breakfast (peanut butter honey yogurt with strawberries and chia)

7:32am - done with breakfast, eaten while watching last night’s Hell’s Kitchen

7:35am - out the door, to campus I go

7:45am - park the car

7:53am - arrive at the student room after a very long, very cold walk from the parking lot to our building

7:55am - log onto a classmate's computer because mine was taken by my first year deskmate

7:56am - begin the day by looking at recipes online...waste.of.time
(looks yummy –> http://www.ragu.com/recipes/detail/25121/1/1-2-3-cheddar-broccoli-casserole)

8:00am - switch to Facebook

8:05am - work on an outline for one of tomorrow's morning patients

8:30am - go to class

8:45am - be real tired in class

9:07am - get midterm

9:10am - realize everything is going to be fine

9:20am - bathroom break while people argued for points

9:30am - class resumes and continues to be not the most exciting thing in the world

10:00am - switch classes from molecular to population

11:15am - technology breakdown in class and we continue class from handouts rather than a projected presentation on the board

11:38am - back to the student room

11:40am - applied for a job in Arizona

12:00 noon - heat up lunch (pumpkin and black bean chili with tempeh and an unpictured apple on the side)

12:30pm - MFM presentation time

12:43pm - actually start my presentation

12:50pm - the majority of people noisily arrive

1:08pm - finished

2:30pm - set up for my thesis seminar practice presentation

2:32pm - find out some promising job news (hopefully more on that by the end of the week!)

2:50pm - finally give my thesis seminar practice presentation

3:30pm - finish my PowerPoint five minutes too early, dang it!

3:50pm - head to my old place of work for fried goodies made my an old co-worker

3:53pm - significantly improved mood

4:15pm - begin prep of Thursday patients

5:12pm - still working...

6:10pm - give up the ghost and go home

6:20pm - get home and change into more comfortable clothes

6:30pm - make dinner with veggies for a "fried food detox"

6:50pm - actually eat dinner (salad beast topped with bleu cheese and steak seasoned TVP and jalapeno hummus dressing) while watching How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days

7:30pm - get angry at my iPhone for being broken somehow and unable to be backed up or synced (grumble, grumble)

7:43pm - dessert in the form of Peeps as it is that time of year

8:01pm - finish this post and decide I really should be doing something academically productive

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Questions: What would your life look like if you blogged every moment?
Are you a fan of Peeps?

A Quick Hello

Once again, I apologize for being so absent.  This rotation is just kicking my behind!  I hope to be back in action a little more once I switch to my final rotation in a little over two weeks.  We’ll see.  Until then I really appreciate you all sticking around.  I ‘m going to try and post shortly about a great night I had out with the Yelp squad and my friend/first year Jessica tasting some great wine.  But for now, let’s do the What I Ate Wednesday thing.

Breakfast was a big jar of chocolate protein oats with cottage cheese mixed in.  I love how the hot oatmeal steams the peanut butter and makes it melty.

That was followed up by lunch eaten in a hurry in front of a packet about ethnicity based carrier screening.  I was learning all about sickle beta thal disease.  I had a bowl full of TVP coconut curry chili made from this recipe.  Honestly it was a great recipe.  I loved how simple it was (bag of this, can of that, one whole onion, etc.) and it tasted delicious.  I used TVP to replace the ground turkey and it worked like a charm.  Protein packed!

I also had an early afternoon snack of celery and carrots with TJ’s chipotle pepper hummus.  This was eaten in the middle of a maternal fetal medicine specialist meeting so no picture of those eats… I wasn’t hungry again until much later in the day.  I was thankful for this because it allowed me to focus and make incredible progress on my to-do list through the afternoon.  I was also the only one in the student room.  People bolted real quick today.  We just finished our midterms…

…so I can see why the ladies were itching for time away from school.  Spring break is coming up soon and we’re all counting down the days. Only two left!  When I finally did get home, dinner happened shortly after.  I had half a baked sweet potato with some marshmallow fluff on top (hello guilty pleasure) alongside steamed broccoli with mustard and a TJ’s veggie masala burger with sour cream.  Needless to say, it was a stellar meal and didn’t last long.

I indulged in dessert a bit later in the form of a loaded caramel rice cake with peanut butter marshmallow fluff and butterscotch/dark chocolate chips.

This was good but honestly wasn’t quite as great as last night’s last ditch effort to eat much needed calories.  I woefully underate all yesterday so when it came to be 7:45 and I realized I had only eaten something like 700 on the day, I made myself chocolate almond milk protein pudding with some marshmallows, butterscotch chips and sauce.  It was divine.  I also stirred in some melted peanut butter.  Awesomeness!

So there you have it.  My quick stop-in to the blog on my way to bed because I’m worn out.  I hope you all sleep well tonight and I’ll see everyone soon for a recap of the super-fun Yelp event from last week.  Also, before I head out, I wanted to mention that upon finishing New Rules of Lifting For Women I have started a new lifting program that I’ll be calling Simply Shredded after the website it’s from.  My first day was yesterday and it was upper body.  Lordie, when I woke up this morning I was just so sore I didn’t want to move.  I guess that means it is working!  Also, in addition to lifting sessions they have a cardio program they call “stubborn fat cardio” that you do on off days.  I tried it out this morning and it had me sweating like whoa!  Going be a good three month program I think.

Questions: What is your favorite lifting program?
Do you have a go to meal when you realize you haven’t eaten much during the day?

Empty Lots, Too Full Crocks

When you leave a hospital and the parking lot looks like this –>

You know you’ve been around for a bit too long.  I made it up to myself today but stopping at Trader Joe’s for some pick me ups in addition to a few soup vegetables for the crockpot vegetable stew I’m making tonight while I sleep.  By the way, the chocolate was recommended to me by my good friend Mary.  She raved, I bought.  =D

Now, let’s do some What I Ate Wednesday action huh?

Breakfast this morning came in the form of scrambled eggs after my HIIT workout at 6am.  I topped some them with some salsa, sour cream, and nutritional yeast.  On the side was an orange for some fruit goodness.

Sadly I got hungry in the middle of class and didn’t get to eat until I was in the car on the way to the hospital after getting out of population genetics.  I chowed down on an apple and some carrots/celery in the car to curb my appetite.

Then when I arrived at clinic I heated up some defrosted salsa chicken and poured it over a big bed of spinach and a few drops of blue cheese dressing for an extra flavor punch.

It doesn’t look like much but I promise it tasted really good.  Thankfully this propelled me through a chaotic afternoon of patients and ultrasounds.  One of my scheduled patients didn’t end up needing counseling but my second scheduled patient did so instead of two I only got one today.  That means I’m one behind for the week.  It’s crunch time peeps!

I snacked on some cheese and yogurt before sitting through some critique and doing some maneuvering schedule wise with my supervisor.  On my way home I surfed the radio channels for new music with little success and I called my momma to talk. When I got home I spent some time taking care of a few emails and then I made dinner since it was already late.  I had a vegan Boca burger with pepper jack cheese, mustard, BBQ, lettuce, and relish on cloud bread (an experiment let me tell you!).

Some celery on the side with spinach dip (homemade and clean) rounded out the meal.  Yummy all around.  The spinach dip needed something, maybe Parmesan and pepper… Next time, next time.  Full of savory, I broke out the sweets for dessert.  S’mores anyone?

This one was made with a honey graham cracker, two marshmallows, 72% dark chocolate, and a smear of peanut butter.  It was for serious delicious!!  I wanted another one but instead I set my mind to chopping up veggies for my vegetable stew inspire by this recipe.  I decided to add mushrooms and spinach, sub in sweet potatoes for the regular ones, one each yellow and green pepper for the red one, and veggie broth instead of chicken broth.  In terms of spices, I used only Italian seasoning along with some pepper and minced garlic.  My crockpot was literally almost overflowing!!!  I hope it cooks down tonight while I sleep.  I’ll treat you all to a picture tomorrow when I see it all mulled and mixed together.  Can’t wait to wake up to the smells.  Nomnom.

Questions: What is your favorite kind of stew?
Create your perfect s’more for me!

Curls

All this moisture in the air is making my hair curl!  It would be nice if frizz didn’t come along with the curliness though. Oh well.

Today’s eats included a last minute breakfast thanks to my complete absentmindedness and morning rush.

I made a smoothie at home and then walked right out of the apartment without it.  I realized this well on my way to class so I swung through a Starbucks and picked up a protein box.

I really needed to eat something because I had already taken all my vitamins for the day.  When I do that on an empty stomach I get real sick.  Now why would you have taken them this morning without eating you say?  I honestly thought I’d be having my smoothie in all of three minutes when I got to my car.  Then I forgot it, and my stomach turned.  It was all I could do to keep from hurling before I managed to shove an apple slice into my mouth.

I enjoyed the hard boiled egg with some provided salt and pepper and squeezed the peanut butter all over the biscuit thing.  Finished just in time for class.  I made it through 3/4 of our first class today then had to skip out and make my way to my clinic site to give my presentation to the medical residents.  All in all, it went well.  I was pleased.  Probably even more so pleased that it was done!  Lunch came after.

I made a huge loaded salad and had it with a honeyed greek yogurt dressing with lemon pepper seasoning.  This kept me full for a bit but after seeing my first patient I needed an afternoon pick me up.  Protein to the rescue.

After all I had lifted for close to forty minutes today and burned some calories while building muscle this morning.  My body was probably entirely too thankful for the protein kick in the four o’clock hour.

Even did way better on my body weight matrix this time around.  By like a minute or more!

By the time I got home around six I applied for great looking prenatal/reproductive job that was literally just posted.  I was so excited.  I couldn’t even take the time to eat dinner just yet. I held myself over with pickles as I finished up my cover letter.

Only after I had submitted my CV and such did I have dinner.  Leftover sweet potato cauliflower bisque with a sandwich on the side of edamame hummus and sundried tomato spread.  Really good food.

A perfect night I’d say.  Well, that is until I started writing my patient letter.  Or should I say bumbling through my patient letter.  I should probably go and focus on that huh?  Yea, off I go.  One more patient tomorrow!

Questions: Ever tried sundried tomato spread?
What is your favorite kind of pickle?

Half A World Away With My Heart

I once again braved the cold and made my way to the gym this morning.  Did some HIIT on the elliptical while reading Whole Living.  By the time I finished I was nice and sweaty and warm and not particularly fond of taking the icy walk back to my apartment.  However, after considering quickly the fact that there was no food at the gym, I moved along.

 

After a quick shower, breakfast seemed the next logical step.  I re-warmed the chocolate protein oats (a combo of rolled and steel cut) I had whipped up last night and put them into my my old flax seed peanut butter jar.

I topped it with banana slices and a light honey drizzle, which really put it over the top.

Deliciousness in a jar.  I ate breakfast while reading a bittersweet email.  My best friend from my ice skating days has gotten married and moved to China.  Yup, as in halfway around the world, China.  It’s hard to be so far away but thankfully technology makes it easier.  I added Shanghai to my world clock so now I always know what time it is where she is.

We plan on Skyping/G-Chatting, evenings for me (after clinic and patients and all that), mornings for her (after her hubs heads to work and she’s just killing time).  Can’t wait for a tour of their new apartment!  And while I’m so happy for her and I’m glad she’s out there doing her thing, I miss her and I sometimes feel like we got jipped in terms of time.  We went to college states away from one another and only got to visit once or twice.  Plus the more we grew up, the less we came home from breaks.  Oh the curse (and don’t get me wrong, blessing too) of growing up into adults…  Here’s to keeping in touch and living vicariously!

School unraveled itself today in the form of Molecular and Population Genetics classes.  The former finished early but the latter dragged on and on.  Seriously, I’m not into knowing how Synder’s ratios come about.  In my world, just give me the formula and I’ll use it appropriately.  I’ve had enough of p’s and q’s and Hardy-Weinberg.  So much so that I got myself real hungry forcing myself to pay attention.  After class, I immediately chowed down on leftover cajun pasta and some [ashy] baby carrots.

Nice and hot and filling.  I’m so glad I decided to bring something warm for lunch because I was chilled after class.  I, no joke, held my warm pasta to my neck.  I was that cold.  Haha.  Sadly, after warming up I had to walk to my car in the cold.  Off to clinic I went and saw two afternoon patients.  They were some of my most rocky patients I have had yet due to some unexpected complications.  Showed me how to adapt on the fly.  Felt good to be done but it was a decent learning experience all told.

I ran a few errands on my way home.  After arriving on my couch a while later, I set out to do a patient letter and get it out of the way.  That went really slowly and eventually I gave up and got some dinner.  Chipotle edamame egg salad sandwich topped with pickles.  Crunchmaster crackers.  Orange.

Man, the egg salad was awesome and those bread and butter pickles were perfect.  I wanted more!  Instead, though, I went back to letter writing and research.  I was interrupted, pleasantly, by none other than my daddy on FaceTime.

It was incredibly sweet and I must say, there is just something so different about speaking so someone when you can see them, you can see what’s around them.  It was so much more unexpectedly emotional to talk with him and see my living room in the background.  I’m such a sap…  Emotionally taxed, I grabbed some dessert (planned before I got all emotional so while this was technically semi-emotional eating, it wasn’t out of the realm of my calorie plan for the day).  Thanks to Pinterest, I had run across a light version of cheesecake consisting of greek yogurt, cheesecake pudding mix, and Stevia for a little more sweetness.

I layered it with an icing layer of almond butter and some mini chocolate chips.

Incredible and really protein packed.  You should seriously try it people.  4oz of yogurt for every 8g (1/4th of a typical pudding mix packet) of mix.  The mixture gets really thick, in fact I think it set just like a light whipped cheesecake would be.  It was great.  Oh and random thought about almond butter: if you get the natural kind that requires some stirring to reincorporate the typical oil separation, try flipping the jar over for a day before you mix.  It will mix sooooooo easily when you return the jar upright and go to stir.  Seriously, this will save you so much time and mess because if you’re like me you try and mix vigorously enough to get it all homogenous but then you end up with overflow and stuff.  I just opened a new jar of almond butter and I was so pleased with how easy this was after letting it sit upside-down for a day.  I will always do this from now on!

Questions: Do you use FaceTime to chat with family/friends?
How has technology kept you close to someone far away?

Kitchen Mats

 

Today’s What I Ate Wednesday post comes from yesterday, mostly because today was a bit of a whirlwind when it came to meal times.  I literally scarfed down breakfast on the way out the door, inhaled lunch twenty minutes before my afternoon prenatal patient while reviewing records, and chowed down my snack in the midst of a patient letter.  Anyways, let’s chat about yesterday’s eats, which I guarantee were just as yummy as today’s.  Breakfast was a green monster with strawberries, peanut butter, vanilla protein powder, chia and flax seeds, and spinach.

Combined with almond milk, this smoothie was almost overflowing!

In the midst of drinking, I came to the realization that I don’t particularly like smoothies made with frozen strawberries.  The whole thing tasted kind of bland and icy.  Frozen bananas for me from now on!  Lunch was a helping of vegged-out quinoa leftovers and a hard-baked eggs.  The best part was my own version of greek yogurt with fruit on the bottom.  Strawberry jam and mini chocolate chips too for a kick of sweetness!

Afternoon snackage was a nice bowlful of sweet potato wedges with sunbutter on the side.  This was an unexpected, awesomely delicious combo.  Must do this again soon!

Yesterday’s dinner was a work of art, probably one of the greatest salads to date.  All forms of veggies plus cranberries, manchego and goat blue cheeses, and lite Caesar dressing.

I ate this baby in front of the TV watching The Biggest Loser.  Hey, at least it was a salad.  I have been known to order Chinese takeout for Biggest Loser nights.  Haha.

Even my dessert was healthy-ish.  Another paleo brownie was almond butter, topped with Arctic Zero and chocolate chips.

See, a fabulous day of eats!  I was most pleased and actually really nice and satisfied all day.  And I wasn’t only satisfied with food, but with my brand new clothes.  I love how awesome you feel wearing all the new things you got for Christmas.  Like a million bucks.

Even matched my earrings perfectly.

That awesome outfit were yesterday’s dubs.  Today was more of a lace day.

Pretty and functional.  I normally wear the purple shirt without anything underneath but given the incredibly conservative Catholic hospital I’m currently seeing patients at, I figured I should add a few inches just to be safe.  Plus, the white lace matched my shoes…which you can see here, kicked off in the middle of Bed, Bath, & Beyond.

I went to the store for an iron and ended up talking myself out of that and into a stellar gel kitchen mat.  It was on my Christmas list and I didn’t get one so I figured I could just buy one for myself!  Thank you gift card.  Why did I have my shoes off you ask?  It’s not like I was going to buy a mat without trying it out for myself!  That would be silly.  This one that I bought felt amazing.  I used it while cooking up my skinny cajun pasta tonight.

Loved how comfy I was the whole time!  Now I’m off to do some more population genetics problems and get to bed early.  I have a patient at 8:20 tomorrow morning which means I need to be on the road by 7:15am.  Not sure I’m going to have enough time to work out before I get in the car so I might have to move the sweat session to Thursday evening.  So g’night all, sleep well!

Questions: Do you use a gel kitchen mat?
What’s your favorite pasta dish?