Roadtrippin' Through March

As of Thursday night, I have all of the dates and pit-stops finalized for my summer road-trip. I'll come up with a cutsy nickname for it soon so don't you worry about me continuing to call it something as lame as "summer road-trip." My mom is actually going with me so that's a small miracle in itself (most of you probably know my mom). I'm sure they'll be pools set up betting on how long it takes one of us to kill the other. I'm putting my money on day 9.
I'm really looking forward to this trip because I'm getting a chance to see a lot of the beauties that this country has to offer. Did I mention that I'm getting a picture of Uncle Sam tattooed on my ass with "Proud to Be An American" written below it? Yeah, jealously doesn't suit you.
Here's the list of places that we're going to either explore thoroughly or just sleep in for the night:

• Memphis (Hello Graceland and drunken people on Beale St.)
• Oklahoma City,OK (sleeping for the night)
• Amarillo,TX (dead Cadillacs...oh yeah)
• Albuquerque, NM (we need a place to crash)
• The Grand Canyon (North Rim...less tourists)
• Salt Lake City, UT (I'm obsessed with mormons)
• Yellowstone National Park
• Glacier National Park (this is the one that I'm REALLY excited about)
• Mt. Rushmore (this is for mom)
• Omaha, NE (a place to crash)
• St. Louis (who knows....I know they have a Trader Joes)
• Back to Knoxville

I'm planning the whole thing out so I hope that I don't end up getting us killed or stranded somewhere in Nebraska. I don't know why but Nebraska seems like the worst place to get stuck. What is a cornhusker? Yeah, exactly.

On a side note, I've started having bad dreams about medical school. Last night, I dreamed that I was in a physiology class where the books were from 1962 and I could never catch up on the reading. It seemed like every time a class ended another one would start and I never had the required reading done. Then when I was looking for my next class, I ended up in this HUGE gym with multiple basketball courts and bleachers 100 feet high. Somehow I entered at the highest point and every time I thought that I was going the right way, there was a sever drop-off with no steps. I almost fell to my death 3 times and when I did find stairs, a friend of mine who actually goes to that school now was sitting at the bottom of them. Once I got to the bottom of the stairs, he was gone and I was right where I started. This dream followed the one I had Friday night about pink gummy ants that lived in my bed and when they matured, they'd morph into fleas with wings. And no, I don't smoke the marijuana.

I can't decide if I'm looking forward to medical school or not. Mostly it's just a means to an end.

Rory, you were lame during your freshman year

Hi All, -G- here...

I know it's been awhile since I've made an appearance on the blog but I've been recovering. A few weeks ago the posse and I decided that we were going to take up masonry. While I was building a nice fire pit, I dropped a load of bricks on all 8 of my fingers (I bet you didn't know that gnomes only have 8 fingers), and I've been wearing little blue hand casts for the past 8 weeks. It's horrible. I couldn't eat, I couldn't type, I couldn't knit, I couldn't work with my stamp collection. My life has been so very empty. Tara hasn't been any help because she refused to type for me and she even refused to floss my teeth. She doesn't care about my oral hygiene, she's heartless.
Well...thankfully I got my casts off last week so I'm back to doing normal gnome things. My stamp collection is looking just super. Tara has been stingy with the computer so I haven't had the chance to get on here. She's collapsed into a puddle of sweat and tears right now so I was able to grab the Toshiba and make a run for it. For those of you who don't know, Tara has been doing this crazy workout called Insanity. She may be lookin' smokin' hot but she's also spending a lot of her free time sweaty and thinking about how hungry she is. You should see the crap she's eating. I don't think that I've ever seen that much tofu in one place. She's also started eating Wasa crackers so she could "get a little crunch." Have you ever eaten a Wasa cracker? Imagine chewing on a cardboard box and there ya go. I'm also pretty sure that she's bought out all the Kashi supply in Erie county. We've got Kashi cereal, Kashi breakfast bars, Kashi granola bars, Kashi, Kashi, Kashi. I hate Kashi. There's no processed anything in that "food". Seriously, they're "naturally sweetened." WTF, give me sugar and high fructose corn syrup. Not only is she losing inches off her waist, she's losing her mind. I want carbs and I want them NOW!
Ok, although Tara has been limiting my junk food intake, she has done a few, and I repeat FEW, kind things. I bet you don't know this but I'm completely obsessed with The Gilmore Girls. I remember watching little Rory grow from a naive sophomore at Chilton to a Yale graduate starting her journalism career following around Barack Obama's 2008 campaign (yes, Rory is real, don't burst my bubble). While I've been recovering from the great masonry debacle of 2010, Tara was so kind to let me re-watch ALL of the Gilmore Girls. Tara and I have them on DVD. Since this was probably the eleventy-seventh time that I've watched seasons 1-6 (I'm still boycotting season 7 because that was when they got rid of Amy Sherman-Palladino), I decided to take a little time to analyze the characters. I have to say that my least favorite Rory is during season 4 when she was a freshman at Yale. She was just so boring and vanilla and that was when she slept with Dean (shame on you, Rory, he was married); however, this is probably one of my favorite Lorelai seasons. Although, she wasn't with Luke (season 4 was Jason), she was extremely witty and her hair looked amazing. Is it sad that a tiny part of me wants to BE Lorelai Gilmore?? Wait, don't answer that. I could go on for days talking about my favorite episodes and characters. All I have to say is that I really, really, really hope that they make a Gilmore Girls movie.




Who knows when I'll be back on here because you all know how Tara is with her computer but she did tell me that she is planning on taking me on a roadtrip this summer. Let's just hope that she doesn't "forget" me again. You know how she is.

Love and Twizzlers,
Gnorman G.

The Classics Revisited...North By Northwest

I'm on a mission, a mission to actually be entertained by a movie. Has anyone else noticed the poor quality of the recently released music, books, movies, etc.? It seems like everything is just half-done or it's just a repeat of everything else that is already out there. Not only is it pathetic, it's also boring and I hate to be bored.
I was talking to Mom the other day and she mentioned something about Alfred Hitchcock and how great his movies were back in the day. I've seen a lot of his movies (seriously, how could I avoid it with having a mother like Trenia), but it's been awhile since I've actually watched one. North by Northwest was one that I had actually never seen so I added it to my trusty Blockbuster account and waited impatiently for it to arrive.
Ok, yes the story is somewhat cheesy but you have to remember that things were a little bit simpler in 1959. The special effects were down right amazing/awful. My favorite parts were when you could tell that the people were standing still and the screens behind them were moving. Sure, by today's standards this movie is crap, but if you take it for what it is and remember that it was made 5 decades ago, it's actually pretty good and highly entertaining. Plus, Cary Grant is the star and did he ever do anything that was bad? I don't thing so.

Forget James Cameron, I love me some Hitchcock.

I Spoke Too Soon

The other day I was telling someone that I had managed to go all winter without getting sick. Cocky, right? Exactly. Yesterday morning I woke up with a stuffy head and a slightly sore throat. To make it even better, I woke up an hour later than normal so I missed my morning workout (I don't like working out in the evenings anymore, that's Wendell's time). Anyway, as the day progressed, I felt my head getting more and more foggy. By the end of the day, I felt like my head weighed and extra 20 pounds and I was having to carry around a wad of tissues because my nose had turned into a geyser. I'm sure you're thinking that I went home and curled up in bed with a cup of tea and a healthy dose of self pity, aren't you? WRONG!!! Since I had missed my morning workout, I did an afternoon one instead. Insanity is bad enough but just imagine doing it while feeling sick. At one point, I got kind of light headed and almost fell into my living room table. Yeah...I question my judgment too. The rest of the night was spent in kind of a haze with poor Wendell either poking me with that over-sized head of his or curled up in the chair whining. He worries about his mama.
Speaking of Wendell....yesterday was his birthday. He's now 2. My baby is getting so big *sniffle*

I bought him a new bicycle and some Legos (by "new bicycle and Legos" I mean that I gave him a can of dog food and told him how pretty he is).

This morning I was expecting a miraculous recovery with no trace of the crap-ola way I felt last night. My optimistic outlook was squashed when I woke up at 7am coughing up the huge ball of phlegm that was lodged in my throat. Pretty. I rolled out of bed, hacked up my lung, put on a pot of tea, and curled up on the couch to try to clear my head. An hour later, I felt semi-human again so I rent to the gym and clocked 3 miles on ye old treadmill. No, it didn't make me feel any better but I'm a woman on a mission so I chose to ignore the fact that my immune system was in overdrive and I felt like someone had tied a plastic bag over my head. However, I did learn 2 very important things at the gym (1) I lost 5 pounds since last Saturday...I guess increasing my caloric intake was a good decision (2) My endurance has increased and I really think that Shaun T might be my new hero.

The computer screen is starting to blur so I'm going to go sit in a dark room and hope that my body stops its revolt.


*Gnorman never gets sick. I hate him*

Everything's Going to Be Fine, Fine, Fine...

The workout program that I've been following is appropriately named Insanity. I think a person must be at least 72% insane to follow this thing. I'm even following the included meal plan...almost. According to the nutrition manual, with my weight, height, and goal to lose weight, I can still eat around 2500 calories/day. Yeah, this seems like a lot but if you were doing this workout you'd realize that you were burning a shit-ton of calories. Well...I still think 2500 is a lot so I've been eating around 1500-1600 calories/day. I haven't had any problems...until now. I was walking around the lovely Cancer Cell Center and as I turned the corner to go into the equipment room, I felt this huge wave of dizziness. I'd been feeling hungry since after lunch (must bring more food tomorrow), and now that hunger has manifested itself into a giant monster of hungry that's causing me to get dizzy and have inappropriate fantasies about a peanut butter sandwich. Thankfully my boss shoved an orange and some string cheese into my lifeless hands, but I still feel like I'm one step away from collapsing onto the floor in a puddle of pathetic weakness.
On a brighter note, I've lost about 6 inches off my waist. This workout is amazing and the only think that will stop me is hospitalization or death. Ok, I'm being dramatic but still...