No Loans, Some Groans

Happy Friday!

We made it to the end of the week and we’re already halfway through January…

And in the carefree spirit of Friday, I wanted to share a triumph with you.  The absolutely wonderful feeling I got deleting this e-mail almost as soon as it hit my inbox.

No more federal student aid for me.  This chick is graduating in four months and never looking back!  Now, yes, that does mean I have to start paying back my loans, but I’d take that over continually accruing debt for any number of future semesters.  Nope, I’m outta there!

My day was spent working from home but that meant that I got to get up when I wanted (aka 7:45 in the morning) and laze about and workout on my time frame. I changed into workout clothes and realized that I had a bit of a bruise from last night’s aerial silks greatness.

It isn’t major, but I wore it like a badge of honor.  Here’s to many more.  At the gym, I finished up Stage Four of NROLFW so I can officially say I’m more than halfway done with the program.  Awesome!  After my HIIT snippet on the elliptical, I came home for breakfast.  On my way I picked up a package I had gotten: chocolate Stevia.

I figured I should try it out for breakfast and threw together some greek yogurt and cherry jam to make a chocolate cherry concoction.  I had that with a side of peanut butter and honey waffles.

The whole thing was pretty awesome.  I forgot how incredible peanut butter and honey is as a combination.  Why don’t I do this more often?  And the chocolate Stevia wasn’t half bad either.  Sweet with a mildly cocoa-y flavor.

After a late breakfast I showered and then got to work.  Even if I didn’t have patients today I needed to get a lot done.  I got saddled with a presentation on the teratogenic effects of antiepileptic drugs and epilepsy in pregnancy.  *groan*  I give it to the whole maternal-fetal-medicine office on Jan 30th but I was told it needed to be essentially constructed by midweek next week.  I figured that I had the whole day today so I was just going to bust that sucker out.  Sadly, it didn’t start off easily.  At one point I’m fairly sure I had something like 17 or 20 Chrome tabs open with al sorts of cohort studies and drug descriptions open.  Eventually, maybe two hours later, things sort of started to take shape.  A Zevia Cream Soda kept me company and kept my spirits up as I trudged through the huge articles.

Finally around 1:30 I decided to take a break and have some lunch.  At the same time I called my supervisor and had a conversation about what patients I wanted to see this coming week.  Ended up with some interesting indications I think but I may pay for it in terms of prep time.  Lunch was an edamame hummus and egg sandwich with the last two slices of cheddar cheese from my fridge.  I had a side of crunchmaster crackers too.

The egg salad was maybe one of the best I’ve made, at least in a long time.  I really liked the edamame flavor with the creaminess of the egg.  Must have been a filling lunch too because I went the entire rest of the afternoon and evening until 7p without so much as thinking about anything other than antiepileptic drugs and major malformations.  CyBot was unhappy too.  See, his red eye, that’s annoyance.

At 7 I figured I had made incredible progress, so much so that I might consider this presentation nearly done.  Or at least its enough “roughed out” for a once-over by my supervisors.  I’m sure they’ll have things to change, add, delete, whatever… Plus, I have the rest of the weekend and I’m sure I’ll make a few changes.  I’m never satisfied.  Dinner was eaten in front of the TV as a reward for working essentially 8+ hours at home.  I made myself a salad with all sorts of veggies, cranberries, goat blue cheese, and spicy French dressing.

I seriously cannot even describe how perfectly creamy, scrumptious, and damn delicious this cheese is.  It made the salad.  It probably would make EVERY salad.  Good buy, Jill, good buy.  The rest of the evening consisted of more Vampire Diaries, some cereal with mini chocolate chips, and crosswords on my tablet.  Not such a bad kickoff to the weekend, especially when tomorrow night is going to be filled with dancing!

Questions: What is your favorite salad cheese?
What is your favorite presentation you ever gave?

Watch Me Fly

Guess what I did tonight!?!?!?!?!?

AERIAL SILKS

And it was awesome!!!

I had a blast.  Hmmm, I wonder if they have orange silks… =P

Question: What is the craziest, coolest type of fitness class you’ve tried?

BBQ Goodness

Today has been kind of like the first day of a three day weekend.  I spent the majority of the time in my pajamas.  Homework is always better in PJs.  I woke up to an alarm at 7:30 mostly because it was still a weekday and I figured I should really get some things done.  I admit I spent a half hour in bed doing a crossword before actually getting out of bed.  When I finally rose, I did the dishes and then headed to the gym.  I spent a little over 30 minutes doing stage four of NROLFW followed by ten minutes of HIIT on the elliptical.  Then I took advantage of my warm muscles and did split stretches.  I must say I am fairly impressed and really surprised at how close I am to the splits already.  Aerial silks, here I come, though I’m sure an intro class doesn’t get to this kind of move for a while.

Love it.  May not be the most comfortable position in the world but it is doable.  I’m going to keep working on it.  When I got back from the gym (speaking of, it is sooo weird to be going to and from the gym with light in the sky)…

…I made myself a refueling breakfast.  I topped two whole wheat waffles with a good slathering of peanut butter, some 2% cottage cheese, and strawberry jelly.

Very yummy meal.  Managed to keep me full for a bit over four hours in which I did a bunch of work.  I prepped the five patients I intend to see Monday-Wednesday of next week.  I edited template letters.  I read my thesis paper a few times over.  I also organized my visual aids binder and color coded it so I can easily find everything I need, the moment I need it.

By two in the afternoon I was getting hungry.  I made myself a plate with brown rice on the bottom, black bean soup on top, and baby carrots on the side.

It was a delicious lunch and, honestly, I can’t get enough of the light sour cream on top.  And the soup, geeze, yum.  I may need to make this every month.  Or, even better, I should make a bread bowl and truly get my Panera on.  =D  I continued my work throughout the early afternoon and then broke to run to the grocery store.  Snacked on an apple during my walk, thanks to the gorgeous 55* weather.

In the spice aisle I found the neatest spice mix: Moroccan.  I seriously love this kind of food so maybe some day soon I’ll suck up the $5 and buy it.

It would probably be cheaper actually than trying to make it at home, especially considering that coriander is some $11 a bottle…  When I left the mart, I ended up being proud of myself.  I have a hard time sticking to my grocery list when I go to the store and typically come out with things that I have little control around, like chocolate, cookies, chips, you get the picture.  This time, I didn’t stick perfectly to my list but the extra buys were a bag of frozen brussel sprouts and three sweet potatoes.  I’d say those are acceptable additions.

I whipped up dinner 45 minutes after I got home (and changed back into my pajamas!).  I made some vegged-out quinoa which ended up really, really good.  The honey and the salt, yum.  I served myself one portion and threw the other five into the fridge.  Yay, leftovers!!  The tempeh I made was drenched in a stellar, spicy, zesty BBQ marinade for a couple of hours and then pan fried.  One awesome thing about pre-cooked tempeh is that you can reuse marinade on your dish because nothing is raw.  I poured some remaining marinade straight onto my “steaks”.

Verdict: perfection.  The BBQ sauce is incredibly delicious and soaked into the tempeh extremely well.  I mean, really, what doesn’t tempeh just soak up?  It’s one of its best qualities.  Anyways, this BBQ is so great that I wanted to share it with you.

Zesty BBQ Sauce and Marinade
Inspired by this recipe.

A lovely recipe for a spicy and flavorful sauce/marinade.  Be careful though, it really does have a building heat the more you eat!  This makes about 2/3 cup of sauce.

Ingredients:
¼ cup plus 1 tbsp BBQ sauce (I used one with a bourbon base)
½ tbsp each ketchup, spicy brown mustard, white vinegar, and soy sauce
3 tbsp beer, any kind
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
½ tbsp each salt, black pepper, crushed garlic, and onion powder
1 tsp each dried basil, dried oregano, and curry powder
¼ tsp each red pepper flakes and paprika

How to:
1. Mix all the ingredients together in a small jar.  It’s super easy to layer things in and then shake the whole thing up.  (Beware when adding the salt, it causes the beer to foam up so make sure you have some room in the jar.)
2. Use to slather any protein, or veg, of your choice.

You should try some, really.  And let me know if you do!  I finished up dinner and stared at the dishes long enough to know that I didn’t want to do them.  I made my way back to the couch and my crossword.  I also enjoyed the rest of the beer that I used in the marinade.

Yes, that’s Vampire Diaries in the background.  I may or may not have watched a crazy number of episodes today while doing my work.  Call it my own mini-marathon.  =D  One thing I have to say, however, is a lot of people die in this show.  All from the same small town too.  Geeze, if I lived there I would get the HECK OUT!  Doesn’t stop me from watching it though.

Questions: Have you seen The Vampire Diaries? Thoughts?
What is your favorite protein/veg to marinate?

Creeper Status, What?

Day two of my last semester down!  No classes today, just eight solid hours of prep, prep, prep.  I did all sorts of catch up work like editing letters, writing letters of medical necessity, doing insurance preauthorizations, and arranging meetings with committee members.  I also did a ton of prenatal prep work.  I wrote three template letters to get me started.  They were for three of the most common reasons for referral in the prenatal clinic: 1) advanced maternal age (by far the majority!), 2) positive quad screen for Down syndrome, and 3) positive quad screen for open neural tube defects.  Glad to have those out of the way, though there will be plenty of revisions I’m sure!  Another super important task I undertook today with my eight hours of dedication: my visual aids binder.  Boy did this thing need an overhaul.  I hadn’t touched most, if not all, of my prenatal visual aids since role plays back in first semester.  There were also things I knew I was missing like cell-free fetal DNA.

And some of the age-related risk charts you can also see in that picture.  Then there was the fun stuff –> infertility aids!!

I’m really not so sure I’ll ever get to use the ART and infertility aids in an actual prenatal session but I wasn’t going to pass up the chance to make them.  After all, I just got back from my internship at RGI and I’m all stock full of reproductive genetic counseling inspiration. All told, my visual aids binder stuffed by the end.  Yes, it was as large as my entire thumb.

I fueled myself appropriately all day.  After a cardio workout this morning, I showered and made myself some PB&J whole wheat waffles with a side of yummy orange by desk lamp light in the early morning.

I admit I tried to front load today’s calories, or at least I thought about it.  And then I ended up with this… Not so front loaded, though tasty.  I really should try to eat more earlier because I always end up under my calorie mark.  Pretty scared that my body thinks I’m starving it most days.  I wish it was easier to eat sometimes.  Anyways, I suppose I’ll keep trying.  For lunch, almost 5.5 hours later, I had some salad with cranberries and light Caesar dressing.  I also had some cheese and an apple that I spaced on taking a photo of.  I was in the visual aid groove.

After lunch, I achieved total nerd creeper status.  I saw an old acquaintance from undergrad announce her unplanned pregnancy.  The first thing I did was look at the rest of her page, past all the congrats and such, and saw a status in December that seemed a bit out of the ordinary: “Life surprises you sometimes.”  Oh really?  So, yea, I busted out the pregnancy wheel.

Turns out that comment was likely posted around the time she would have noticed a missed period and taken a pregnancy test.  Yes, I’m almost ashamed of how creeper-ish that was.  Ridiculous.  Haha.  So, after that little nerd break, I went back to visual aids and letters.  I had planned, and even packed, a fairly caloric snack for the afternoon to tide me over to dinner but ended up not being hungry at all.  By the time I rolled around to my home couch, though, I was getting a bit rumbly in the tummy.  I made myself some brown rice mixed with Trader Joe’s edamame hummus and lima beans with teriyaki tempeh on the top.

Drink of the night: cream soda.

Treat of the night: a truffle or two from my stocking loot.

And still, despite all of this yummy wholesome food, I was under calorie for the day.  Please body, don’t think I’m starving you, okay?  I’ll try to use more peanut butter, more avocado, more dense things to hit my number.  I’ll try and front load so I don’t end up with a thousand for dinner that I know I can’t bring myself to eat.  I’ll try, every single day.  Now I’m off to do some stretches to help me achieve the splits.  I’m trying to get a bit more flexible for when I tackle aerial silks.  I mean, let’s be honest, how awesome would this be to do?

Yea, that’s what I thought.  You can pick your chin up now, hehe.  =D  Have a good night group.  I leave you with a tune since it’s Tuesday!

Questions: Can you do the splits?
What are the best stretches to do?

Comfortable In Class

Welcome to the last first day of class I will ever have.  I can’t even believe it.  My whole life I have been a student.  I don’t know any different.  Needless to say, the idea that gives this post its name is this: I’m incredibly comfortable in class.  Regardless of how much I dreaded this day (I was more than a little doomsday-ish about this particular Monday given that it was on the end of my last ever holiday break) when I got back into that classroom and started taking notes again, it dawned on me just how easy and simple and completely un-taxing it was.  I’m comfortable there.  It’s familiar, it’s normal, it’s something I’m really good at.  So, yes, there are days I don’t want to be there, I don’t want to take the tests, whatever.  But the underlying theme remains: this is what I know, all the rest is a tad bit scary/unpredictable/foreign/new.  However, I admit, new is exciting.  So while I’m comfortable here in class, I’m totally ready in a lot of ways to get myself up and out and into a real career position.

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

Breakfast came in the form of an almond butter and strawberry jelly version of my protein breakfast cake.

This was great refueling food after a Stage 4 NROLFW morning paired with a quick 10 minute interval workout at the end.  Being honest, I didn’t stop sweating even after my shower.  Haha, yea after burn, I guess.  On a more somber note, I did something I had never done before today: I ate breakfast at my dining room table with a single candle lit.

I spent the entire time staring at the candle, kind of setting my intention for this whole semester.  I know this is going to be a doozy of a 15 week rotation and, on top of that, I have two classes, my thesis seminar presentation, and a cumulative exam.  Yes, you read that right.  I have to take an exam on the entirety of my two years in this genetic counseling program.  Ahhhh, scary!!!  Anyways, this was a remarkable way to spend the morning, really.  I think I might make it a Monday morning tradition.

Molecular Genetics and Population Genetics, my two classes this time around, took up my entire morning.  These days were the easy ones filled with housekeeping, syllabi, and some introduction material.  When those lectures wrapped up, we moved on back to the student room where I devoured my lunch quickly.  I had a mashed avocado sandwich (made with chipotle mayo and grape tomatoes) and some crackers on the side.  I also had the apple a little later in the car on the way to my prenatal rotation site.

It was a nice lunch.  I had to use up the other half of my avocado after last night’s creamy past masterpiece.

Both were super fantastic and filling.  Speaking of filling, my afternoon was taken up with prenatal genetic counseling session observation and orientation work.  I came home finally at 6p with all these grand intentions of doing prenatal rotation prep work.  Sadly, I didn’t get as much done as I wanted too though I did some of it.  I’m planning on spending the entire day tomorrow working on everything.  I need to haul booty to get things done but hopefully I will be much more prepared tomorrow night.  I observe again on Wednesday after classes.

Dinner was a salad with all the usual suspects.  I topped it with a broken up Trader Joe’s vegetable masala burger.  Oh my yum.  It was perfect.  I kind of want another one, but this time whole, on a bun, with some sour cream.

I used spicy brown mustard as a “dressing” for my salad.  Some say it’s a weird habit but I think it’s a nice break from the regular creamy goodness that normally graces my greens.  After dinner I was craving something sweet so I dug into an orange first.

Possibly one of the sweetest, yummiest oranges ever.  I think had a few bars of the giant KitKat I found in my mailbox at school today.

Thanks to the supervising genetic counselors in the department.  Technically this has been in my mailbox since before holiday break (get it? KitKat give me a break?) but I just got it now.  No reason not to enjoy it responsibly.  I only had a few bars, not the whole thing.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, I’m off to bed.  I woke up to terribly loud music this morning, thanks to a brand new alarm clock that I obviously didn’t know how to work.  I plan to rectify that this time around.  What song shall I wake up to in the morning?  Always a good question.  Oh, and before I forget, I wanted to let you all know I have an exciting thing coming up (though the precise date is undetermined as of yet) –> I’m going to learn how to do aerial silks.  I have put up the appropriate inspirational picture on my phone’s lock screen and I have bought my Groupon.  I can’t wait.

Questions: What’s your secret to enjoying dessert responsibly?
What new thing are you going to do this month/year?