Greg's Blog

Fun Day

Coming off two straight Fun Day Championships, I expected today to be a day of intense competition and fun (but mostly intense competition). We started the day with a free barbecue banquet in the cafeteria and went to play the games at 2:00. We soon found out that the rules for this year's Fun Day were going to be different. Teams would be awarded points for the place they come in during each event. Usually the winner of Fun Day was simply the team that won the most events. So technically, a team could win two of the four events and still lose Fun Day if they really tanked the last two events.
Confused yet? To make matters more complicated, this year we had events happening at the same time, which meant you would have to play volleyball, play a game of basketball then run over to the volleyball court again to play the next round.
So we started off with basketball in which we had an extremely good team. We won our first game pretty easily but we were shipped off to the volleyball court before we played our second game. Our volleyball team featured the two best volleyball players in school, Scott and Chris Jetti. We beat three teams in a row pretty easily to get us to the championship game. However it started to rain pretty heavily so we were told we had to run the obstacle course before it got taken down. So we ran the obstacle course but soon realized it was almost impossible to complete it because the big wall at the end that you have to climb was soaking wet rubber, providing you no friction at all. The rain was so bad that they cancelled the bouncy boxing event before it even started. Our obstacle course time was terrible but we didn't care much because we knew we'd win basketball and volleyball.

(Here is a picture of the course. You can see the big rope wall at the end that I did not enjoy.)

So after the obstacle course we got ready to play volleyball but the Fun Day officials told us that we would not be doing any more events because of the steady lightning and rain. We could not believe it. We asked if we could finish basketball and the answer was the same. Basically we were told that we could not finish the two events that we were dominating and that whatever teams were not knocked out yet would divy up the points. We were told the winner of Fun Day was basically going to be the team with the best obstacle course time.

(Referee Tim Donaghy was spotted with some of the Fun Day officials during the events.)

So our team does not get the 100 dollar prize nor the satisfaction of 3-peating like Michael Jordan's Chicago Bulls. We were left standing in the rain, ready to finish off our competition in volleyball and basketball. Unfortunately the rain sent everyone home and left us wet and disappointed.
Congratulations to the winners of Fun Day, which included my roommate Kevin Day.

Notable Notes from The Last Week

      Sherman College has been very eventful these last few weeks. Everyone is excited about tomorrow's fun day, a celebration of food and games that takes place around the campus. John Guarnieri and I are hoping to win our third consecutive fun day with the help of Scott and Chris Jetti.

      I have been waiting to watch the new Batman movie, but the IMAX in Charlotte has been sold out every day. I could watch it on the regular movie screen but I know I will kick myself for it later by missing out on the IMAX experience. The worst part is that everyone has been telling me how good it is.

      I recently went to Minnesota for my good friend Scott St. Pierre's wedding. The whole weekend was a lot of fun and I got to see my high school buddies for the first time in a while. St. Paul proved to be a great place to visit and I hope my friend and his new wife have a long and happy marraige.

      I would like to congratulate Nick Fabian on improving his intern ranking to #32. Nick is currently in his 12th quarter and has been working hard to master the diversified and Pierce techniques. He has been getting a little confused on his activator protocol, a system that Sherman College has been teaching as an elective, which has kept him out of the top 25. He has also been establishing his golf game to make himself a more well-rounded doctor.

Clinic During the Break

The last couple of weeks have been pretty wild. I have balanced going to Florida for some vacation time with seeing patients. Since the clinic is only open three days this week and completely closed next week, it should leave me some time to relax and recharge for next quarter. It's hard to believe that I have been here almost three years!
I am also looking forward to the activator elective that is being offered this upcoming quarter. I was leaning towards having one in my office but I didn't want to spend the hundreds of dollars in seminars to try to learn how to use the instrument. Hopefully the class goes well.

Celtics Win 17th Championship!

The Background
Ever since my early childhood, I had grown up in a Celtic's family. Having been too young to remember the Bird era I was resigned to watching old tapes and hearing the tales of Boston's legendary rivalry with the L.A. Lakers. For the last 15 years or so, the Celtics had floundered between mediocrity and hopelessness. After finishing in second to last place last year there was finally some hope. The Celtics were in prime position to grab Kevin Durant or Greg Oden, two superstar college players who were thought to be the best NBA prospects since Lebron James. I was pumped. I called over some friends to watch the lottery, knowing that the Celtics had the second biggest chance of getting the top pick in the draft and would surely get Oden or Durant.

The Punch in the Stomach
Then the unthinkable happened. The Celtics ended up with the fifth overall pick in the draft, a position that would bring them a possible subpar starter with their available choices. It was a terrible day and I told my girlfriend that we are going to be stuck watching the Celtics be just bad enough to miss the playoffs, but good enough to never get a quality lottery pick for the next 5 years.

Hope
However, in just a few weeks, the Celtics traded virtually their entire team for all-stars Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen. They picked up some role players hungry to play with three all-stars for bargain prices and went through the regular season smashing the competition. The team developed a chemistry that was thought to be impossible in just one year of play. Along the way, many NBA stars proclaimed this year's Celtics as the best defensive team they had ever seen. Yet entering the playoffs, most experts predicted that the Celtic's lack of playoff experience would catch up to them. They predicted a defeat by the Detroit Pistons, a team that seemingly made it to the NBA's final four every year, in the Conference Finals.

Tough Times in the First 2 Rounds
Unfortunately, the Celtics did little to silence their critics. In the first round, the Celtics played an Atlanta Hawks team that entered the playoffs with a losing record. They struggled mightily on the road and needed 7 games to knock the Hawks out of the playoffs. In the second round they faced the defending Eastern Conference Champion Cleveland Cavaliers. Cleveland proved to be an even tougher task for the Celtics, as they needed a legendary game seven performance from Paul Pierce to overcome Lebron James' 40+ points that night.

Eastern Conference
The Celtics were limping into the third round as the Detroit Pistons restlessly waited for them. The Celtics had not won a single road game to this point, and their sharpshooting ace Ray Allen had gone frighteningly cold (to the point of embarrassment) in the first two rounds. This series proved to be fun to watch because of the fact that so many people at Sherman College are from Michigan, that many of them started watching the games. It finally allowed me to talk a little NBA at school. Many things happened during the Detroit series. It seemed like the turning point for both franchises as Ray Allen resurrected himself into the best three point shooter in the league. The Celtics began winning away games again and their defense returned to its dominant form. On the Detroit side, the players looked like shells of their 2004 championship squad. The Celtics closed the door on the Pistons in 6 games.

Beat LA!!
The Celtics went into the NBA finals playing the L.A. Lakers, their most hated foes. Of the 62 championships in NBA history, the Celtics and Lakers have accounted for 31 of those wins (Boston 17, LA 14). This was the NBA's dream matchup as the Laker's Kobe Bryant was coming off an MVP season. Despite Boston having the best regular season record in the league and having a 2-0 record against Los Angeles this year, they were seen as the clear underdogs.

Games 1 and 2 in Boston
The series began in a dramatic fashion. In the first game, the Celtics lost their leading scorer Paul Pierce to injury in the middle of the game. He was be carried to the locker room as the crowd in Boston fell silent for much of the third quarter. However, Pierce came running out of the locker room to the largest ovation I have ever heard at a sporting event ten minutes later and hit two big threes to help the Celtics take game 1. Game 2 featured a superhuman performance by Celtics benchwarmer Leon Powe who went on to take more free throws than the entire Lakers team.

Games 3, 4 and 5 in LA
After Phil Jackson publicly complained to the media about the referees, game 3 featured the Lakers as the ones getting a large amount of the calls. Laker benchwarmer Sasha Vujacic, who self-proclaimed himself "the machine," went bananas and hit almost every shot he took. The Lakers went on to take game 3 and start game 4 like madmen, taking a 24 point lead. The Celtics fought back and managed to pull the greatest NBA finals comeback in league history, as well as take a 3-1 lead in the series. With all the momentum in Boston's favor, LA gutted it out to win game 5. Kobe Bryant made a memorable steal on the red hot Paul Pierce (38 points) at the end of the game to pull the Lakers out of reach.

Game 6 Back in Boston
Simply put, the Celtics demolished the Lakers in game 6 so badly, that most experts used the terms "soft, gutless, and rolled over" many times in their post-game analysis. Ray Allen overcame a family crisis and an injured eyeball that took him out for half the game to finish with an NBA record 7 three pointers for the night. South Carolina native and defensive MVP Kevin Garnett brushed off the label of big game choker as he punished Pau Gasol with strong moves to the basket. The game got so out of hand that benchwarmers such as Glen "Big Baby" Davis were driving coast to coast and slamming the ball over the beaten Lakers. Pierce went on to win the Finals MVP and the Celtics won the game by an incredible 39 points. It was an incredible display of basketball ability and an unforgettable night for Celtics fans everywhere. I look forward to watching the Celtics raise their seventeenth banner to the rafters next season. Just in time to kick off the journey for Green 18.

Florida Vacationing

After finals, I decided to spend the next few days in Jacksonville, Florida with my family and girlfriend. We saw a disappointing Celtics-Lakers game on Sunday but we followed it up by taking our dogs on a walk down the beach on Monday. Jaclyn's little Maltese "Ripley" ended up swimming for the first time in his life as we walked between sandbars. He is a good looking dog until he gets wet. Then he turns into a very strange looking creature.

The highlight of the week happened today when we went back to the beach without the dogs. Jaclyn and I were swimming about twenty yards out when literally hundreds of sting rays swam right through us. Some old people were yelling at us for five minutes before we finally realized what they were talking about. We looked down and saw these pinkish-orange shapes the size of a basketball.

   We were pretty freaked out at the time because we were completely surrounded by the schools, but we were able to walk right through their path and back to the beach without them getting angry at us. They were pretty neat as they looked like they were skimming on top of the water and riding the waves right at their breaking points.

Unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me, but I went home and looked up what we saw and found out they are called cownose stingrays. I found a couple of pictures here showing what they look like.

White Water Rafting in Charlotte

Today I took my girlfriend and 4 Jetti's out to Charlotte, NC and enjoyed some white water rafting at the US National Whitewater Center. We booked a raft earlier this month and took the hour drive to the facility. Upon arriving we were witness to a gigantic park, featuring the largest man made circulating river in the world. Although there were various mountain bike trails, shops, restaurants, obstacle courses, and kayaking that could be done we decided to stick with the rafting for today.
When you first arrive, you must go through a half an hour of instructions that tell you everything from how to paddle to how to get back into your raft if you fall. We then were introduced to our guide John. He yelled at us a few times because of our lack of being able to paddle in unison but we quickly got the hang of it. For the next hour and a half, we rafted down three different waterways. Since I had never been rafting before, I was apprehensive at the first few falls. I soon realized that I would not fall out during every rapid. On the contrary, the glide down the rocks was actually fairly easy. I was disappointed at first about the difficulty of rafting until our guide introduced us to going back up the falls, which almost sunk us every time we tried it. The other thing I realized is that the front seats of the boat are exponentially more difficult to sit in than the back four. The front of the boat is constantly being dipped, turned, and popped up while the back stays pretty steady.
Scott and his wife Kelly were the only ones that were dunked into the water. At first it was pretty horrifying to see them fall off but Kelly basically jumped back in the boat as soon as she hit the water. Chris had to tug Scott back in a moment later. At one point another rafter fell in the water and we had to pick him up after he got stuck underneath our raft for a little while. We ended the trip with a fast paced trip through the hardest waterway... backwards.
If anybody is interested in going rafting, it is 35 dollars per person and you usually need to book your trip in advance.

One of the Best Teachers at Sherman College

Starting out at Sherman College, it is important to be prepared for your upcoming anatomy classes. Many students have referred to the first, second, and third quarter anatomy classes as the "weeding out" process because you have to commit yourself to studying to get through them. You also are introduced to dissecting and studying the anatomy of cadavers, an unforgettable experience. Not only are the anatomy classes tough, but you are spending more time in this class than any of the other classes you will have at Sherman College.

Luckily our school has a brilliant anatomy teacher that makes a subject that could be dry and monotonous into an organized, humorous, and interesting endeavor. Dr. Sheldon Clayton has been with the school since 1984 and has literally saved thousands of students from failing the anatomy portion of our national boards. He does not give "cupcake" tests and emphasizes the importance of attendance. In return, students have to focus each and every week so that they can pass the anatomy part of our curriculum. Having never taken an anatomy class in my life before coming to Sherman College, the material was pretty overwhelming to me. I spend a lot of hours after school rewriting my notes so that I could keep my B- average. During Anatomy 2, I realized how bad I was at studying the cadavers in our lab and ended up having my soon-to-be girlfriend of two years walk me through the miles of nerves, arteries, and veins of the human body.

Dr. Clayton would always take the extra steps to make sure we were learning as much as we could. He knew when our class needed a break and could use some of his comical stories. He aided us by creating videos that we could watch on our computer to study anatomy when the labs were closed. Most importantly, he made sure we had all of the tools we needed to get us through our national boards as well as to become better chiropractors.

I thought this was an interesting article in that it is so strongly connected to chiropractic. Researchers have developed a way for monkeys to use their minds to send signals to a robotic arm in hopes of advancing the technology of prosthetic limbs. It just goes to show you that your brain's communication with the rest of your body is so vital to maintaining good health. When these lines of communication are impaired, as can happen with subluxations, the messages that aren't getting through can be a real health hazard. Make sure you visit your chiropractor regularly to keep these communication lines open.

Sherman Elects a New Mascot

This is how I feel about the new mascot.

As one of the few people who actually plays sports around the county under the Sherman College name, I felt we had to change the unicorn as the mascot. I have written about this before but to reiterate, it was a little embarrassing to be the unicorns. Most of the time, our soccer teams would just "leave out" the unicorn name when registering a team into a league. Before there was a vote for the mascot, I was a big proponent of adopting the Raptors as the mascot because of the giant raptor statue that Reggie Gold donated to our school. However, I feel that being represented by a pack of lions was a good choice. I look forward to the 2008 Chiro Games with our new mascot.

Sleep Can be Hurting Your Spine

I have learned from Sherman College that one of the main causes of subluxation to the spine comes from prolonged inactivity, especially when your body is maintained in a bad position. I was reading an article from Health.com that had some helpful tips on how to keep excess stress off your spine while sleeping.

Dorothy Foltz-Gray writes,

"Back sleepers. If you have lower back pain, a small flat pillow under your knees may help your back curve naturally.

Side sleepers. A pillow between your knees can help to keep the pressure off of your hips.

Tummy sleepers. If you must sleep in this back-unfriendly way, a flat pillow under your tummy can help keep the spine's natural curves."