Phil: I told you. I wake up every day, right here, right in Cleveland, and it's always February 27th, and there's nothing I can do about it.

True to form, art imitates life, life imitates art. This of course under the assumption that GHD is art.
My eyes shot open this morning to candid radio chatter, there's a full blown snowstorm, but it seems like nothing more than a couple of flakes.
I've finished packing my entire apartment, i rearrange everything so the move should go as smoothly as possible. I make a few final phone calls to ensure that everything is in order...
Around lunch time, I bundled up, headed to the local dive diner, ordered a BLT, a waiter proceeded to drop a tray of dishes...again I thought nothing of it.
I went back to the apartment, took a nap, woke up to a phone ringing...the flight canceled. I'm stuck in Cleveland.
I was supposed to leave and yet in the back of my head I hear Phil:

"You want a prediction about the weather, you're asking the wrong Phil. I'll give you a winter prediction: It's gonna be cold, it's gonna be grey, and it's gonna last you for the rest of your life. "

Tragedy, my chauffeurs flight is canceled, the flights the next day all booked,

"Phil: Come on, *all* the long distance lines are down? What about the satellite? Is it snowing in space? Don't you have some kind of a line that you keep open for emergencies or for celebrities? I'm both. I'm a celebrity in an emergency."

And so I'm in Cleveland for another three days...if tuesday rolls around and I'm still in Cleveland I vow to learn how to play the piano, how to ice sculpt, and be a kinder, gentler Cole.

Replacement copy ordered

According to Amazon I'll have my sweaty little paws on another disk of The Seventh Seal early next week.  I'm as nervous as the fat girl to returning to her 10 year high school reunion having lost all of the weight, stinking of her desperate need for acceptance THIS time, yet consumed with the fear brought on by memories relived.  That is what this movie challenge has reduced me to.  I am a stinky fat girl.

everything has changed

Groundhog day has changed everything. When I see Bill Murray a slow smile appears on my face, my heart warms a little, and a nostalgia kicks in. He's become like an old friend, I feel as if he and I have gone into battle together, I see his sad eyes and think I understand his pain, his sorrow, his deepest emotions. When I see a photo of him, I start reminiscing about a past relationship with its highs and lows and all around mediocrities. Scary? Sure. Sick? Definitely.

GHD is as much apart of me as the burns on my forearms from trials and tribulations in the kitchen. War wounds that I look upon as reminders of being younger, more naive.

If someone mentions GHD, the day, the film, the feeling, I smile and know that I can answer any and all questions.

This past GHD was treated much like a second birthday, postings on my facebook wall wishing me a happy groundhogs day. Some very close friends found a man in a groundhog suit and had a photo taken with him holding a sign wishing me a happy groundhogs day.

The superbowl wasn't GHD free, Punxsutawney Polamalu being featured in an esteemed superbowl commercial. (side note HUGE fan of the superbowl results this year...Manning Face).

My opponent and I have also discussed our respectful pilgrimages:

His to the swedish shoreline to drink milk and eat strawberries (sounds like heaven, irony implied?).

I, on the other hand, head to Punxsutawney, Penn for the actual GHD festivities (it's been compared to Mardi Gras) followed by a trip to Woodstock Illnois to eat angelfood cake and heavenly sticky buns despite the fact that the Clocks diner is now a Starbucks (woodstock is the actual location of where the movie was filmed). This trip through the midwest, though fun, would be less exotic than Nils' journey to Scandinavia. Bastard.

Fear receding faster than George Costanza's hairline...

To describe the experience of going from watching one movie 3+ times a day for an entire month to not watching it is difficult, as the body tends to "blur" memories of a traumatic event.  The first stage of T8S challenge was very much that, a breakup and a near-death experience mixed into one.  While I'd become increasingly jittery and paranoid as I watched T7S over and over again, once I stopped those feelings actually increased as my body missed what it had grown to expect.  The first day "off" was reletively normal; I saw Death walking down side streets out of the corner of my eye, I heard Nils Poppe speaking in Swedish behind me only to disappear when I turned around, and every time I heard a woman's voice it was Bibi Andersson saying "I love you."  If that experience could be characterized as a waking dream then days 2 and 3 were living nightmares.  Instead of catching glimpses of a black cloak I felt icy fingers on my wrist, or heard breathing inches behind me.  I woke up in a sweat several times a night, almost always within a few minutes of 5AM the first time, and then almost on the hour after that until I got up for good at 8 for work.  At work I would have to translate people's words, or try and read lips as if they were speaking in a foreign language.

All the while I have to be honest in that I was completely consumed with horror.  You know the feeling of when you wake up after a night out and you have no idea where you are, but you know that it's not where you're supposed to be?  It was that, multiplied by the fact that I wasn't just waking up but was in fact feeling that way 24/7, and I'm sure that's why I was unable to sleep more than a few hours at a time as well.  I'd trained my body to watch T7S, and when I stopped it was telling me that I'd broken a bond of trust and would pay the penalty.  My shoulders hunch at my desk as I remember back to that first week "off" and now I'm rubbing my arms like a junkie remembering his first week off of smack...

more to come

Buckeye Chuck

Glad to see that Nils has decided to recommence the challenge, in a way I wish I could start again tomorrow, as seeing that it is indeed Groundhog day, it would only be fitting to resume with a marathon viewing.

FUN FACT: Ohio has their own version of Phil the groundhog! They have named their vermin Buckeye Chuck. I'm not sure where in Ohio this event takes place, but I can almost guarantee polka bands and outdated outfits, annoying insurance salesmen, and many women like Nancy Taylor. I debated going and reenacting some of my favorite scenes from the film. I would of course go in costume (that of Nancy), do her modified rumba in pink spandex with rabbit fur earmuffs...and then proceed to a local diner to shove one piece of angel food cake in my mouth with one bite. However I'll be unable to participate in the days festivities due to lack of ride and compatriots.
Instead I will watch the film on my own, just once, since it'd be unfair to rack up more viewings with Nils unable to truly compete.

Yes, I am winning the word challenge...however it should ALSO be noted that I am winning the shape challenge as well by a landslide!

There is another sub-competition of who is more nerdy...we have yet to qualify whether or not being more nerdy is a win, or a loss...this is a challenge in which Nils is dominating...again we have yet to qualify this as a positive for Nils, or for myself...

Out of a dark cold winter...

Well I've decided to finish this challenge after all.  I've gone through just about a 12 step process after losing the dvd and I'm back to being optimistic that I'll finish within the original goal of 365 days.  As it stands 104 days have elapsed since the competition began, and it's been a few solid months since I've seen T7S.  Nicole is moving to my current city of residence on February 26th courtesy of one Uhaul chauffeur (yours truly) and I've ordered a new copy that should arrive immediately afterwards.

In the black void of time between this post and the previous one a few sub-competitions have sprung up, and I'll try and catch everyone up on them here.

1) Nicole and I each assigned our counterpart an uncommonly used word that we have to try and sprinkle into conversation while going unnoticed by our unsuspecting audience.  I passed off "callipygian" (meaning having an attractive posterior) to Cole while her word for me was "acaudate" (referring to creatures without tails).  Every time we used our word without anyone noticing we secured one point. If someone called us out for using a strange word, or asked us to elaborate on its definition we lost the use of the word and would have to petition the other to be given a new word.  Nicole dominated the first round, racking up 12 points before being called out.  I had less success, mainly because with Avatar having come out everyone wanted to talk about things WITH tails, thus severely limiting the chances for my word to be used.  As it stands the score is 14-6 Nicole.

2) The Shape Challenge.  In this challenge we assigned each other a distinctive shape that we would have to find as many examples of as possible.  A sighting must be verified with photographic or video evidence to be considered legitimate.  I chose a bow-tie shape for Nicole, and for me she selected "Dinosaur shaped".  When I questioned the ease of being able to quantify a "dinosaur shape" she relented and clarified that as long as I could adequately explain the shape's dinosaur-like characteristics it would be counted as legitimate.  Bing.

I'll start to post more regularly again starting now, and will in several posts attempt to describe the harrowing sense of loss and despondence that followed the sudden break in watching T7S.  Truly it was a fight to free myself from the grasping clutches of an addiction, and it took several weeks before I could think and process without the taint of the movie polluting my mental processes.  I was as the moon after a lunar eclipse, slowly growing in confidence and luminescence as the blighted darkness receded...