Happy Easter!!!

Bunnies are everywhere!!! Celebrating Easter a little early, there was much gains to be had. But first, breakfast. Yet another classic brotein bar. For lunch, and another pre-exam carb up, I had another Clif bar. It was Chocolate Brownie this time. After my exam, I went straight to the gym. Afterward, I recovered with another Clif Bar. This one was Crunchy Peanut Butter. I can't really tell which flavor I like more. 

Once I got to the House of Gains, I found hugeness all around me. I grabbed some rolls, some potato salad, and quite a bit a lot of ham.

I know this may not appear to be a lot of ham, but these were three super thick slices. Trust me. And not be deceived by this picture, I must inform you that I actually ended up eating probably eight rolls by the end of the day. I had four or five for the main meal, then I snacked on them throughout the rest of the day. All of them had ample butter, of course.

For a bit of sweet snack, I was gifted this delectable decadence:

Dark chocolate goes great with this marshmallowy stuff inside. Heck, dark chocolate goes great with anything.

A little later, when formal desserts were being brought out, I filled some more room in my stomach with these turtle-esque brownies. There was chocolate, there were pecans, there was caramel, and there was powdered sugar. Ummm...yes!

And then...there was pie. Oh, but not just any pie. No, this was Sidney's Famous Apple Pie. Oh yes. Her apple pie is quite simply and rather bluntly...astonishingly and awesomely amazing.

Of course, per literally everyone else's request, it had to be accompanied by vanilla ice cream. Not being one to argue, I followed suit.

A little later later, Sidney got the craving not for any of the myriad of leftovers now spilling out of the fridge, but for Kraft stove top macaroni and cheese. She actually got this craving yesterday, but she delayed the fulfillment of said craving until today.

The funny thing about this macaroni and cheese is that it didn't involve macaroni and I'm not sure if it involved cheese. But I convinced Sidney to venture out from her safe little "Classic" mac and cheese bubble to try the "Three Cheese" variety. It was so worth it because the Three Cheese variety is sooo much better than the Classic.

And thus ended my gains for the day. I'd call it a success.

Lucky Socks

Yes, today was a day that called for my lucky socks. I initially decided to wear them to assist me in an exam, but they turned out to bring much more goodness throughout the day. 

The first noticeable luck they bestowed upon me was news of a class cancellation. Not only is a cancelled class always a nice surprise, but the class that was cancelled was the class immediately preceding my exam. So this was doubly good news. I now had an extra 75 minutes of study time. It turned out to actually be rather beneficial, which ultimately means that I didn't prepare well enough when I should have. But that's okay today. 

The next bit of luck was during the exam itself. Going in, I knew the exam would be quite difficult. Natural selection, gene flow, genetic drift, and coalescence can be rather complicating on the technical side, but I felt better than expected with my performance. Shear speculation, of course, since I don't actually know my score, but I feel as though this confidence was party provided by that extra study time. Either way, the socks had already given me two wonderful bits of luck.

And they weren't done. 

It was a Thursday, so that meant that I was staring at nearly 5 hours of effective idleness alone in a computer lab. It drags on after a while, but today was different. Sidney was craving some ice cream and Doritos, so I went to the store, got them, and took them to her. But while I was at the store, I walked by the pre-cooked chickens. Long story short, I got one. And I ate it.I was actually able to eat something before 2130. This is a relatively minor occurrence, and can scarcely be considered luck, but it's a nice change of pace to say the least. 

But I still had my physics lab to attend. Disheartened by the fact that I would like miss almost an hour of the KU Sweet Sixteen game since my lab was from 1900-2050, I quit my tergiversating and sauntered out the door and drove in to town. Upon starting my lab, however, it was clear that it could potentially be a rather quick lab. And that possibility came to fruition. I left the lab at around 2000, and I was home by about 2030, before the game started! This was the 4th lucky thing today!

And the socks were still not done. 

This last bit of good luck may be fairly obvious. The final bit of luck bestowed upon me by these lucky socks of mine was a KU victory and a trip to the Elite Eight. Rock Chalk Jayhawk!!!

These socks have become my lucky socks for a number of reasons. It really stems from the fact that they're my favorite socks. They are my favorite socks because they were a gift from Sidney on my 21st birthday, but also because they have crabs on them. This is significant because Sidney is a Cancer, astrologically speaking. So the socks have sentimental value to me. 

And yes, I wore them in this position all day. 

Now on to food.

I started the day with a classic brotein bar. I had another for lunch, and then a Clif bar was used as a carb and swoletein preparation for my exam. The last Clif bar went uneaten today since I didn't sit in the computer lab for 5 hours.  

Yes, instead of toiling for that long, I went to the store and got, among other things, this:

I ate it. I did leave a little meat for leftovers tomorrow, but I could've eaten it all. I weighed the chicken while it was still whole, and it weighed about 2.8 pounds. I don't know how much meat that equates to, but I didn't leave much. This was a perfect swoletein meal on a non-lifting day. Needless to say I didn't get tiny today. I am glad, too, that I left a little bit for leftovers, because about 15 minutes or so after eating I began to feel really full. But not too full.

I then went to my lab. When I got back from my lab, and before the KU game tipped off, I had a little dessert. I know I didn't lift today and therefore didn't deserve any ice cream, but it wasn't the biggest serving of ice cream I'd ever had, so I didn't really worry about it.

Moose Tracks is really very good.

National Puppy Day!

In order to celebrate all things puppies, I...well, did nothing related to puppies. I went to the gym, does that count?

I didn't suspect so. But, even on this national holiday of incredible significance, I stuck with my routine. I had a classic brotein bar for breakfast, although I unfortunately dropped half of it on the sidewalk while attempting to open it while walking to class this morning. Ah well, I guess I got a little tiny today.

For lunch, I had another Clif bar. This time, it was crunchy peanut butter flavored. Surprisingly, and pleasantly so, it wasn't literally crunchy. But it sure did taste good. Plus, it had 11 grams of swoletein and 5 grams of fiber! That's pretty much a miracle bar right there!

I went to the gym, feeling great about everything. I was sure it was going to be good day. I hopped on a bench, did my warm up sets (not 135 lbs as every other bro would lead you to believe), and was still feeling great. Even having just taken a week off from lifting in favor of stuffing my face with carbs, I could feel a PR coming on. I opted to repeat the sets I had done the week immediately prior to Spring Break, just to get back into it. I threw on my first work set, unracked the bar, slowly lowered it to my chest, and attempted to press it back up. It didn't feel good. I was able to complete the prescribed 3 reps in the set, but it just felt really difficult. The same holds true for my second work set. My third work set was more of the same. On this third and final set, I always go for as many as possible. Two weeks ago I did 6 reps. This week I only managed 4. I guess that's to be expected, but I only missed 1 week. Oh well, hopefully next week is better!

I did a few sets of pull-ups, and then I moved on to my broutine of biceps curls and triceps extensions. After my first set of curls, I realized that the bad lifting day wasn't confined to my bench. I could barely scratch out my 3 sets of curls. I went and did some triceps rope push downs and then walked out the gym, cutting my usual workout in half.

I had a brotein shake afterward, and headed up to the library to hang out with Sidney for a bit.

Then I headed in to blast my Systematics professor about a homework assignment due tomorrow. After this, I headed home.

It had been awhile since my brotein shake, and I was a little hungry. Remembering that I didn't lift as much as I normally due, I decided to eat lighter. Just kidding! I had a few M&Ms and a mini Reece's cup.

I warmed up a chicken thigh and some mashed potatoes leftover from last night. I placed both of them on a bagel. That was a good idea.

 
This tasted purdy dang good.

I then proceeded to study my tail off for an Evolutionary Biology exam tomorrow. This lasted quite a while, and eventually became hungry again. I considered repeating my chicken potato bagel sandwich, but I decided to change it up a little bit. I heated up another barbecue chicken thigh, toasted the bagel this time, and slathered some cream cheese on the bottom half of the bagel. I lovingly placed the chicken thigh atop this cream cheese-covered bagel half and then placed the top half of the bagel on top of the chicken. This was pure genius on my part.

I felt, however, as though this simply wasn't enough food, tasty as it was. I warmed up some rice and chicken curry from a couple nights ago to go along with this masterpiece of a sandwich.

I'm still trying to get over how delicious that cream cheese barbecue chicken bagel sandwich was. It blew my mind with flavor!

Lumpy Bumpy

Being back to a normal food schedule for the first time in what seems like forever, I loaded up some bars for the day ahead.

I started off with a classic.

For lunch, I mixed it up a little bit. While I was at the store yesterday, I picked up some Clif bars just because they're different and because they've got more calories. They've been recommended to me several times, so I figured I'd give them a try. This particular flavor, chocolate brownie, was really good, plus it still had 10 grams of brotein.

A few hours later, I had my third bar, another classic.

I was apparently so hungry that I almost forgot to take a picture of it.

For dinner, I had a salad with freshly shredded cheddar, ranch dressing, and croutons.

For the main course, I had a lot of Sidney's super buttery mashed potatoes and three boneless barbecue chicken thighs.

I was pretty full after all this, so naturally I had dessert. Sidney made pudding again.

This time it was butterscotch. She got distracted by something mid stir, so it was slightly lumpy. But it tasted fantastic, and we both came to the consensus that we actually kind of like the little lumpies.

Choco Choco Chocolate!

The brain needs energy to function at its highest potential. The brain gets its energy from glucose. Simple sugars go straight to the brain in the form of glucose. So, following this bullet proof and error-free logic, and since I needed my brain functioning on all cylinder today, I shotgunned a cupful of sugary cereal for breakfast. It was an off-brand version of Golden Grahams, but I'll tell you what, it tasted just as good if not better than its name brand counterpart. 

It always seems that when I carb up on test days I always forget to bring other food for later in the day. Well, it happened again today. Oh well, I went to the gym anyway. I did some back squats and leg presses. Afterward, I went to the grocery store to pick up some chicken. I got a little over 7 pounds of thighs, but on the way out I grabbed a 99-cent, 440-calorie, chocolate chocolate chip muffin for a recovery meal. It was one of the best recovery meals ever, and I could feel my muscles growing in appreciation.

Later, for dinner, I had some rice and some chicken and potato curry.

I had two identical, rather full bowls.

I also had a couple carby granola bars.

Having been to the gym and having gone hard on legs, I wanted some dessert. As it's now well known, my go-to dessert in this situation is ice cream. I suggested this to Sidney, and she emphatically agreed. Unfortunately, we soon discovered that the only ice cream left was coffee flavored. Seriously, that is the only flavor of ice cream that I literally cannot eat. But no matter! Sidney offered to make some chocolate pudding. Of course I agreed, and I helped bring this to fruition. It was some of the smoothest, best tasting pudding I've ever had.

Seriously, this pudding actually made me question whether or not ice cream was my favorite dessert or not. I made no definite decisions, but just the fact that it made me question it is really highly indicative of how good this pudding really was. 

03.20.2016 On the Road Again!

Today was a travel day. But since Manhattan is only about 90 minutes away from Lawrence, it can barely be considered a travel day. We took the back roads home. Surprisingly, driving through agricultural Kansas isn't boring like everyone thinks. There is some beautiful scenery and some quaint little towns here and there. 

But before we left the hotel, Sidney and I finished off that doughnut lottery box from last night. We each had two. I let her have the purple sprinkly one since its name is related to the main university in Manhattan. 

We went to an apparently really good coffee shop across the street from the hotel. Since I don't drink coffee, I cannot attest to this. But it was really busy on a Spring Break Sunday, so it must be good.

After we got back to to Lawrence, I headed back to my parent's house since I had to retrieve Andrew from the airport later that night. It was lucky that I was at my parents' house since his flight was 45 minutes early.

But before that, I found a QuikTrip cinnamon roll. I warmed it up in the nuclearwave. It was good.

But seeing as how with this cinnamon roll and my breakfast of two doughnuts I had had almost nothing but pure carbs all day, my parents and I made a trip to Freddy's. I got a triple bacon cheeseburger with onions and some fries.

After eating all this not sugar, I felt as though I had over-compensated. So, being at Freddy's, who is famous for their frozen treats, I ordered a chocolate brownie sundae with whipped cream and a cherry on top.

It didn't seem like I ate a lot of food today, but since most of my food was sugar, I'm sure I got plenty huge.