Too-short break

but very productive. I got to bike (a 12-hour race, at that!) and climb. I weeded, a LOT, and mowed. I replanted a tree shrub. I cleaned, organized, and moved furniture (in the living room). I finally finished the trim on the new window, and painted the crown molding in the living room to set off the latte-colored paint I put up in July to replace the former fuschia-magenta. I got new shoes, visited with friends, and cooked. I put in some time at REI and sold a few bikes. I slept. I ate. I caught up with friends up north on my slightly-frustrating cell phone.

Oh, and I got notice that I won a $7300 scholarship for writing an essay on the life and research of I.N. Toftness, a chiropractor who contributed to the growth and development of the field of chiropractic care. Yay!

Living room before and after:













































Today I headed out with my friend Webster to hike up Kennesaw Mountain, a molehill about 20 min north of here. It's actually a pretty little hike, about 3 mi round trip for the short version. The trail goes over the top of the "mountain" and runs the ridge, with views of downtown Atlanta. The weather was perfect, 80 with no humidity, yahoo! Now I will have the afternoon and evening to get my stuff together for classes starting tomorrow (at 7am), and to attend our cycling club has a potluck organizational meeting at dinner.

I forgot that since I started this blog in February, I had not put up pictures of my other favorite pink-ablating project: my room. Here's a before and after. I can't believe I lived in this room for a year and a half with pepto-bismol pink walls (also note the floral border, ugh!!!!!!). I kept meaning to get to it, but it was just easier to keep the lights off :) Finally, New Year's Eve, I realized that one resolution that I had not kept was to get RID of the pink in my bedroom. I decided that it was going, then and there. So, I stayed in that night - given New Years' past, my liver probably appreciated it :)

12 hours of Dauset

The morning began as a light mist, which made the trail..... well, slick as snot.

We had some carnage, but no one had to visit the ER, always good. Of our eight riders, four had wrecks which resulted in blood. Melissa's and Greg's were the best (they're OK, so I can say best! tho i bet they're both a little sore today)



This was Melissa's first race, and she rode very well and took it pretty aggressively, esp for the # of times she has been out on the trail (she just started this summer). She took a couple of hard falls, and got right up, dusted off, and kept going. She is made of steel, I tell ya!

The trail was a sweet, sweet loop with lots of turns, swoopdies, and just enough climbing to take it outta ya. Thankfully the mud dried up for the most part in time for my second lap. My second time around the loop, since I had seen it before, I took a little faster, and Siren and I had a fantastic time. My bike was just MADE for that kind of trail. Since the weather has now turned more bearable I intend to put Siren to good use :)

Ryan and Melissa spied a fantastic spot for us to set up our team tent, right next to the pond and away just a little from the main (noisy) staging area. I enjoyed a nap in my purple hammock (the one mom and dad brought me back from mexico!) and Moose enjoyed several dips in the water. All in all a very good day.


Don't bother asking about how we placed: both teams DQ'd due to emergency returns after wrecks. We finished the race nonetheless, just for fun :)

DONE WITH FINALS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! for now, at least, and that's all i care about

this has been a very yucky quarter. definitely the worst i have had here. i am so glad to kick it in the tookus on the way out. Buh-bye.

my ninth final was this morning at 8 (two friends were here at 630 to cram before the exam. Yeah, ME, up at 630 studying with friends). i've been flying by the seat of my pants all week. minimal prep time for each exam, try, the night before?? not my usual style but the lesson i can take from this week is that..... well, i guess i can do that! So SCREW all of this working so hard. Apparently it's completely superfluous.

I shouldn't speak so quick, i haven't seen four of my grades yet, but i think i'm in pretty good shape.

Today I am taking the day OFF!!!!!!! I got a haircut, and i think it's still long enough to do an updo for Darcy and Chris' big day :) I bought TWO pairs of shoes. Go, Payless! I also decided to really indulge, Aunt Cathy style, and I got a pedicure (i couldn't believe that it only costs $19 around here, i'm going to do that a lot more often now!!) I feel fabulous. Well, exhausted, but still fabulous.

I am headed out soon for lunch on a patio with Steph, Sherri, Kimmie, and Ashley. Yup, i'm wearing my new shoes :) Brown faux-suede 3" pumps with a small shoelace bow at the front. Twinkletoes, you may want to drop by Payless, these are really your style :)

Tomorrow i get to scramble for final arrangements for Saturday's 12-hour mountain bike race, to which our cycling club is sending two teams. Then I work in the evening. Then Saturday, I get to spend on my bike most of the day. Siren has been so lonely, she'll be happy to play in the mud! Our teams don't even intend to be competitive, we're all beaten to crap from the quarter we just finished. But boy, we're going to have a fun day :) Twelve people, three dogs, two teams, a grill, a tent, 80 degrees and sunny, and 15 miles of windy rollercoaster singletrack. Yay!

boards part 1 are over!

boards hurt. two days, six subject exams. several were a bit brutal. but the good news is that i think i did ok, so hopefully i won't have to repeat any of the exams!

Thank you SO MUCH to Aunt C, Suebee, Tracy, Rusty, Michelle, and Kristen for your words of encouragement - it meant a lot to me to get your messages. And Michelle, if you felt a brain-drain on Fri and Sat, that was just me channeling your alpha waves down to Atlanta so I could draw some extra wattage :)

Saturday evening, I went with my neighbors Aryn and Celeste and a bunch of other Lifers to see Dave Matthews in Piedmont Park, in downtown Atlanta! The Allman Brothers opened. 'Twas a great show. I guess I'm a Dave Matthews groupie - i've seen him 5 or 6 times that I can remember? The first show I saw was at Bates, in 1995 - get this, the event is actually logged on Wikipedia!!!!!!!!! Quote:

• Dave Matthews referred to a concert he performed at Bates in 1995 on the Charlie Rose Show, claiming that the concert "at this little college in Maine" sparked his career^[9].

Wow, do you guys believe that?? How many of you remember that concert? In the gym, no seats, just gym floor. I do believe some of you worked security!!!!!

Today I have just been existing. Trying to take a day to breathe, because it isn't over till the dog sings: I have a quiz tomorrow AM at 7, a project due on Thursday, and two lab finals on Friday. Then, next week, oh boy, final exams!! This is really unneccessarily yucky and really pretty brutal. By means of comparison, after my qualifying exam at MCW, I got to take a week off - then it was summer break, and I was just working in the lab. Kristen says that when she took boards for med school, they were scheduled so that students had a month off afterwards. Not so much for this place, i guess.........

Oh well. Here's another happy thought:




ps i was just perusing the rest of wikipedia's entry for Bates and holy cow look what i found:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newman_Day

Yay Buchholz!!!!!!!

a funny snippet from the yahoo article:

"...catcher Jason Varitek rose from his crouch to run to the mound. The rest of the Red Sox soon joined him there, and David Ortiz enveloped the rookie in a bear hug.

"He's somebody you don't want to see running at you, full-speed," Buchholz said.

Ah, I would have loved to have been at Fenway tonight..... Sox 10, Orioles nada! All i can say is that we'd better keep this Buchholz character :) Damn good job by him, that last pitch just sailed over the plate.

http://boston.redsox.mlb.com/index.jsp?c_id=bos

Did anyone else think that the Red Sox pigpile at the end of the game looked a little familiar? here's to hoping -

Funny that I already have plans to be in Boston twice in October...

a new friend

moose and billy and i have a new friend who has set up shop in the garden. She is a yellow garden spider. Rather large one, too, she's about 2" long. Freaked me out a little. So i took a pic to look up details on wikipedia, since i'm a nerd like that. Apparently yellow garden spiders are nonvenomous Georgia natives, and are capable of eating prey 200% their size. I think we'll keep her around. I could use some help with the arthropod wildlife around here :)

post-note: my friend Alex

On tuesday, my friend Alex came to me with a complaint of pain for the past six weeks in his back, along the distribution of a mid-thorax rib, with pain on inspiration. He asked whether I could do anything about it. The adjustment was a simple move, and it went well. After I adjusted him, his pain was gone and he could take in a full breath without pain. Obviously he was happy with this :)

Yesterday I was able to catch up with him again. Alex has not had pain since Tuesday, and has not needed to take any ibuprofin since I adjusted him. Plus, he has had three good nights of sleep.

Yay, I did something good!!!!!!!!

still studying...

no letup in immediate sight. Two exams tomorrow, somehow our instructors have spanned three weeks with midterms. Considering that the term is 11 weeks, and the last week is finals, that makes 3 of ten weeks spent just taking exams. Fun, huh?

My friend Steph and I were talking about school on Friday after our Skeletal Radiology exam. Both of us came back to school after time doing other things. Both of us were encouraged by our own chiropractors to pursue this career, and both of our chiropractors assured us that we would "sail through school with a 4.0, no problem!" We figured out that either chiropractic school has become more difficult in the 10-15 years since each of our chiropractors went thru it, or that our respective former chiropractors have very selective memories :) We also both came to the conclusion that had we KNOWN how difficult this was going to be, we may not have chosen this path. However, nearly $100,000 into debt, it's definitely too late to turn around.

I still know that the end-product of this process is what I want, though, and I know I just have to plow thru a lot of crap to get there. Today some really good stuff happened: I did nine adjustments, on six people total. Three of the adjustments had the result of my patient saying, wow!! That was awesome!! Two of my patients were no longer in pain after I adjusted them. (the others were not in pain to begin with...)

THIS is why I am in school. Because in essence, I am learning how to help people not hurt, by helping to solve a biomechanical problem rather than masking its symptom with a drug to numb the pain. I am learning to help people to *function* better. We are, after all, machines!

I feel so good knowing that after six weeks of pain, Alex's rib doesn't hurt. If when I talk with him on Friday, he tells me that he was able to get a good night's sleep because he didn't hurt, I might just jump for joy. When I adjusted Kate today, she got up and walked around and turned to me and said ah, that was so good, what the hell did you do, I'm walking differently and it doesn't hurt and it doesn't feel stuck! She said it just like I did when Dr. Franson adjusted me the same way, three years ago. A wow moment for me.

It's not as simple as that, though. I'll get back to y'all about more of what restoring proper motion and biomechanics does to the body in the long run. One clue to a single facet of the answer: When you sleep deeper because you're not in pain (increased REM sleep), your body is able to heal all of its little daily insults and injuries better (via growth hormone, which is released during REM sleep...) For now, I'm headed for sleep myself - I will be getting up at 4 to study for my 9am exam and my 1pm exam. Again with ugh.........

a belly laugh from Mike Hayward

This one's SO good I have to share it!! Thanks for the laugh, Mike :) though really, it's not entirely funny..................

--------------------

> Many will recall that, on July 8, 1947, witnesses claimed an unidentified
> object, with five aliens aboard, crashed onto a sheep and cattle ranch
> just outside Roswell, New Mexico. This is a well-known incident many say has
> long been covered up by the United States Air Force and the federal
> government.
>
> However, what you may NOT know, is that in the month of March 1948,
> exactly nine months later, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Bill
> O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Condoleezza Rice, and Dan Quayle were all born.
>
> See what happens when aliens breed with sheep?

Studying for Boards Part I

A more detailed synopsis of what it is to study for the afforementioned "Boards" - here's why things are pretty crazy for me right now. On top of my 25 credit hours and caring for four patients and a house, a yard/jungle, and a job, as well as studying for midterms this week and next, I have to review the following courses for Boards, all of which (and more) will be tested at the picayune detail level:

Anatomy and Physiology I
Histology
Osteology & Arthrology
Gross Anatomy I, visceral
Gross Anatomy II, musculoskeletal
Spinal Anatomy
Central Nervous System Anatomy
Peripheral Nervous System Anatomy
Anatomy of the Special Senses
Embryology & Organogenesis
Microbiology I, bacteriology
Microbiology II, virology and parasitology
Immunology
Pathology I
Pathology II
Visceral Physiology
Neurophysiology
Endocrinology

and oh, yeah, Biochem I and II. Thankfully that studying was fairly easy to knock off. Tho re-learning glycolysis and the TCA cycle again reminded me that studying for a test like this is an exercise in futility - it is unlikely that I will ever need, or find practical use for, 90% of the stuff that I will re-learn to pass boards.

The moment of truth, or rather, weekend of truth, is Sept 7-8-9th. Yes, they test on Sunday.

After Boards, though, I will be over the hump. (I hope?) Or at least through a really big, flaming hoop.