P90X - Day 13, 14, & 15

I got a nice bruise from Thursday night's archery lesson. It doesn't hurt, but it doesn't look terribly pretty. The string from the recurve bow did manage to perfectly aim for and hit a scar from baking muffins.

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I didn't do X Stretch on Saturday (Day 14), but technically, X Stretch is optional, so it doesn't count. At least I'm saying that it doesn't. I'm going to try to make it up later this week. Sunday was Chest and Back again. But before I did P90X, I went for a 4.4-mile run on a jogging trail near me. It wasn't too bad, minus the repeated feelings of nausea, and the lingering chest pain after. By the time I got home, the temperature had cooled down to 91F. So, naturally, I was bright red and sweaty when I walked into my apartment. It's not a great look, but I felt good for running. I walked around a bit to cool down to a point where I could bend over without getting sick, and then I started doing P90X. That's dedication. I skipped the ab workout though. I figured I did enough working out, right?

On Friday night, I hosted a Girls Night In. It wasn't entirely Paleo, so don't judge me harshly. We made spinach pasta from scratch. I didn't use a recipe, just went based on feel. We wilted some spinach and added in flour, egg, and salt in my food processor. The first batch wasn't great, but the second one turned out really well. Here's some photos from it...

First you use a rolling pin to the dough.

Then get really excited about sending it through the pasta machine for the first time on the widest setting.

Once it's a suitable thickness, you switch to the attachment on the other side of the pasta maker,
which cuts the dough into your actual strands of pasta.

Show off your handiwork, 'cause you're awesome!

We made pesto sauce to go with the pasta and "pulled chicken" (from a store-bought rotisserie chicken). Serve with salad and roasted asparagus, and here's the result:

P90X - Day 12

I turned off my 5 o'clock alarm this morning and went back to sleep, but I did wake up before my 5:30 alarm sounded. Grumbling to myself, I changed into my workout clothes and grabbed my P90X Legs and Back worksheet before heading out the door to my complex's gym. Legs and Back as well as Chest and Back are workouts that I need to do in the gym because of my lack of pull up bar. Not that I can actually do a pull up. I could maybe hang from the bar for a while. Upper-body strength has never been my strong suit. I'm not disproportional though, with strong legs and weak arms; I do remember winning at arm wrestling against the other girls on my Varsity soccer team during an indoor-because-of-hail practice. I just feel that my arms should be stronger, to correlate with my leg strength. Does that make sense? So instead of doing the impossible (for now) pull-up, I use the lat pull-down machine to imitate the pull-up motion. The back portion of the workouts consist of reverse-grip chin-ups, close grip pull-ups, wide arm pull-ups, and switch-grip pull-ups.

Proper Pull-Up Form:

Anyways, I went to the gym early in the morning, which is probably one of my favorite times to go to the gym. Unless someone is doing the same workout as I am (which I do miss), I like having the gym to myself. The gym is my territory, at least for a little while. And if people do invade my temporary territory, they usually come after I get there and leave before I leave, so it doesn't really count. I saw a total of three people yesterday morning, with two of them only showing up five minutes before I completed my workout. I pushed myself hard enough that I was nauseous when I finished the workout. How wonderful. I survived and didn't actually get sick.

After work, I went to an archery lesson, before heading to the park for an outdoor viewing of Pretty in Pink with LMR and her boyfriend. You'd think that I'd feel like a third wheel, but any best friend's boyfriend who will watch WWE PPV with me because LMR is out of town for a conference allows me to not care about third-wheels. When I got back home, I pulled out my violin and practiced for an hour. Man I miss playing violin. Overall, it was a great day!

Eye Dominance

Did you know that you have a dominant eye? Surprise, you do! And no, it's not necessarily the same as your dominant hand. I'm right-handed and left-eyed. The term is ocular dominance, and refers to the brain's preference of visual input from one eye over the other.

How To: Test Eye Dominance

1) Hold your hands at eye level in front of you, thumbs and forefingers touching. Your hands should be vertical, as if your hands are pushed against a wall.

2) Move your hands closer together, so that the triangle formed by your thumbs and fingers has gotten to be about the size of a quarter.

3) With both eyes open, focus on an object in the distance through the triangle.

4) Now close your left eye. Can you still see the object you focused on? Congrats, you're right-eyed. If you can't see the object, you're left-eyed. Just to make sure. Reopen your left eye and close your right eye. What do you see? If the object is no longer in your field of vision, you have confirmation that you are in fact right-eyed. If you can still see it, congratulations, you are one of the rare people who do not have a dominant eye.

Roughly 2/3 of the population is right-eye dominant. A small percentage of people show no eye-dominance, however that still leaves us with about 1/3 of people being left-eye dominant.

What this means: if you shoot bows and arrows or guns, you might need to change what side you shoot from. For archery, you'll hold the bow with your right hand and pull back on the string with your left. It allows you to aim better. For shooting guns, you may want to adjust your stance so that your right foot is is front and your left arm is straight, using your right hand to steady the gun.

An interesting fact about people who have left-eye dominance is that there seems to be a correlation between people who suffer from with migraines (particularly auras) and left-eye dominance. (1)

And for something fun (thanks to BF for introducing me to this):

"I shake my ears back and forth"

1) Aygül R, Dane S, Ulvi H., Handedness, eyedness, and crossed hand-eye dominance in male and female patients with migraine with and without aura: a pilot study. <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16158700>

Archery

Months ago I created a poll for you to vote on what my next exercise choice should be. Well, it came down to a three-way tie between archery, P90X again, and rowing. So... I had my first archery lesson today. Yes, you read that right... Archery! Who's a badass? Yeah, that'd be me! The only time I had shot a bow and arrow in the past was at renaissance festivals. Every time that I go to a ren fest, I leave with a desire to learn sword-play or archery. Thanks to a handy-dandy LivingSocial voucher, I'm finally getting around to archery. I started off on the short-range and after a few warm-ups where I learned the form, I managed to get four, count that, FOUR bulls-eyes right next to each other. Did I mention I'm a badass? So the instructor switched me to the longer range target. I only got one bulls-eye, but hey, I'm a beginner... give me a break!

Speaking of archery, did you watch the USA men's archery team when they were competing against South Korea? Our boys look like Southern rednecks who go hunting every weekend, whereas the South Koreans looked like their only form of physical activity is pulling back on that cord. I definitely chuckled when I watched it this past Sunday. Another amusing/amazing thing is that the top South Korean archer is legally blind. "In tests of his vision Im Dong-Hyun scores 20/100 and 20/200 in his right and left eyes respectively." Somehow, he still manages to be an amazing archer. And he doesn't want to have corrective surgery because he's afraid it will mess with his archery performance. Crazy!

My entree selection... yum, steak!

It's also Restaurant Week(s), so my friends and I went to out to eat. For those who don't know about restaurant week, a bunch of restaurants put together a special menu for patrons with a portion of the cost being donated to the food bank ($5 for dinner, $3 for brunch/lunch). It's a great excuse for everyone to try out different restaurants and feel good about helping others. Win-win! The downside is that they don't have a ton of options available and some of them aren't completely Paleo-friendly, though can be made so by asking to hold the rice/pasta/grain-product. Plus, the third course offered is dessert and not many places have a Paleo-friendly dessert. However, the restaurant we ate at tonight had coconut ice cream. Huzzah!

And we had two bloggers at our table, so fortunately our friends were nice enough to wait before tucking into their meals so that Shasie and I could snap photos. Shasie is a fashion blogger (Live Life in Style), but she still takes photos of food, like me and our waiter. That's right, we bonded with our waiter about blogging. Once I have some time I'm going to hunt down his blog.

Coconut ice cream, with coconut flakes. Yum again!

I didn't eat this, but my buddy Z had this chocolate tres leches. I didn't realize that was possible...