One-Handed Handstands

Today was another one of those busy days of running around.  In the morning, I finished my Up Dog two week trial with a bang; half hour of spinning followed by almost 1.5 hours of yoga.  The spinning teacher never showed up, so we had to spin by ourselves to their playlist, which was difficult for me, as I'm still so new to spinning.  I put in a valiant effort for half an hour, so I'm pretty pleased with myself.  I do like spinning, although it's more expensive than yoga, so I'll probably stick with running and biking outside for my cardio.  Yoga right after spinning is definitely more challenging, but I enjoyed it and got to try a new teacher, Nicole Ulrick.  All the teachers at Up Dog have such different styles (I've tried several Meaghan Townsend classes, Kaleigh Lundy, Claudia Fucigna, Sara Ivanhoe, Jen Pastiloff and now Nicole) .  I liked Nicole's class; we did a lot of new poses and a ton of inversions.  I even got to demonstrate one-handed handstands against the wall in front of the whole class with (a lot of) her help; I even impressed myself, I didn't know that I was capable of that move.  She didn't do as much flow, which actually was good for me, since I already did my cardio before the class.  All in all, I like Up Dog as a studio; I feel like I have actually improved at yoga over the last two weeks and can do things that I either never tried or wasn't capable of previously.  I have a few more trials at a couple of other yoga studios around town to complete, but I think I will sign up for a series after my other trials are done.  I'll continue to go to Yogahop (my regular studio) and Power Yoga more, particularly since they are in Santa Monica, but I really like Meaghan's classes in particular and will try to make it over to West Hollywood every once in awhile, especially if I have other business in the area.

In the afternoon, I ran a ton of errands including Trader Joe's, Costco, the tailor, Albertson's, Co-opportunity (where I signed up for a membership), Bay Cities Italian Deli and Whole Foods.  It's exhausting, but no one place had everything I needed! I got home a little late so had to cook dinner in a relative hurry so I made Thai Seafood Red Curry.  It took about an hour to prep and cook, and was a hearty (and spicy!) meal.  We washed it down with our favorite Weihenstephaner Hefe Weissbier, which was a perfect balance for all the heat.  I basically combined the recipes found here and here.  We had the curry with a freshly baked baguette from Bay Cities and some blanched yam leaves from my parent's backyard, dressed with some garlic, soy and sesame oil.  For dessert: strawberries dipped in dark chocolate (I just melted about 1/2 lb of bittersweet chocolate in 1/2 cup of whole milk over a double boiler).