A little grocer's list

Do grocer's use lists? And if so, are they of groceries, or just things that grocers do, like pick up the dry cleaning? Ever say an obscure word a few times (or a common word a bunch of times) and when it leaves your mouth the last time, it seems like an odd random noise that is completely detached from its original meaning? Ever have that happen when typing?

Anyway, let's see! We saw 1984. That was excellent; now I have to reread that book! We also saw Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and Across the Universe. I wouldn't say I was thoroughly impressed...I would use the term underwhelming, but that seems to be a polite way to say I didn't enjoy the experience, so instead I will say that I was whelmed. Thoroughly and completely whelmed.

Christine and Ryan, unfortunately, have come and gone. What a shame it was to lose out on two people who we had so much in common with, who could have served as powerful allies down the road. What a double shame it is that only one of them exhibited such a vivid repugnancy of personality traits. Disquieting. (I just wanted to say that word.) But, in with the wheat, out with the chaff!

Yesterday, Girl and I went to the lake. And when I say lake, I mean the only lake in Fort Collins. And when I say lake both times, I mean resevoir. But it was fun! We got to swim around, though it is VERY eerie that there is no sand...only jagged rocks. Some of those jags are going horizontally, in that we could sit on a flat rock shelf under the water part of the time, but as soon as we got maybe 15 feet out from the "shore", it drops off immediately. I didn't try to touch the bottom; the only information I could get by doing that is either that the bottom is indeed too deep for me to stand on but shallow enough for me to dive down to touch and probably get chopped up by broken glass (there were SO many glass bottles scattered about!), or that the bottom is unfathomably deep...and that would just serve to creep me out. So we swam and sunbathed and drank and talked, and I had some fun trying to do little rock climbing moves/pull-ups on the rock face that served as 80% of the "shore line". We're definitely going back.

We're getting towards our final countdown, B and I, which is quite bumming me out. I'm very, very optimistic about our future...but I'm realistic about the difficulties we'll face. That is, I am very aware that there will be difficulties, but I am certain we will be able to overcome them without major trouble.

That is all! B(en) out.

Whewt, behind!

No self-chastisement this time! The subject will suffice.

Let's see, last I posted as at Pride...well, Pride was awesome, to be sure! Since then, Bridget and I have been trying to do some cooking! We made stuffed bell peppers, though we sort of screwed it up and put water inside the peppers instead of around the peppers. Duly noted! We've made wilted spinich salad...excellent! We've made leek potato soup with tons and tons of dill in it...cut back on the dill next time! And the piece de resistance, we made hippy-burgers! Lentils, walnuts, onion, and a bunch of other stuff, with egg thrown in as a binder. Formed into patties and fried in butter, they are, all things considered, pretty good! VERY healthy. Gotta like that!

Last Sunday, Christine and Ryan came over to play. It was awesome! It's so nice to have friends that not only understand our identities, but live them themselves! Tomorrow we have another date planned. So excited!

That's all for now. This will serve as a placeholder until I get up a little more motivation. Ben out!

Prouding prouding!

Hello hello!

Well, as the title of this post would suggest, it will have to do with only one thing: PRIDE!

Though, somewhat unfortunately, there isn't much to say...at least as far as the reporting of tangible events goes. (Can an event be tangible?) But, let's start from the beginning, shall we?

We woke up at about 7:30. We wanted to get to the parade, which started at 9. I took forfuckingever to get ready...every time I leave the house to go to an event like this, I know I'll forget something. We ended up leaving around 10:30, due solely to my slowness, and drove the 80 minutes or so to Denver. (As soon as I got out the door, I realized I forgot my purple sharpie for drawing "Proud to be Pan" on my chest. Balls.) I was dressed in my leather jock, rainbow flag cape, leather chest harness...and nothing more. With hair in braided pigtails, I was hoping to be the bell of the ball. You be the judge.

We got into Denver with absolutely no problems, despite having missed the parade. Just as we started looking for parking, a guy waved us into his lot. We rolled right up, two blocks down from the pride area. As we sat in the car making sure we had all our accompaniments, a car that was slinking into a spot in front of us got hit on the passenger side by a car backing up at an inappropriately fast speed. I managed a "HeyWHOAA" before it happened. It didn't help.

Fortunately, it seems they sucked all the potential shittiness out of the day! We walked around for a few hours...shook our groove in the dancing square, checked out all the booths, and watched the drag show. It was hot-hot all day...I think Bridget and I were both fairly dehydrated starting off, and it didn't get any better. We ran into Duff and Andy after a bit, and chatted them up. They suggested we check out a couple bars with them later in the evening, and they pointed us in the direction of some awesome booths

We got some Subway, because all the food was ridiculously priced. 6 bucks for a cup of beer? Too...lame! It was on a ticket system. Bridget and I have decided that if anybody ever asks you to buy tickets to buy things, you need to go ahead and not do that plz. As we were finishing our meal, we got a call from Christine and Ryan, telling us to meet them outside the capital building. We hooked up with them and wandered around the booths, stopping at a few this time to check things out. Ryan ended up getting a bracelet that looks and clasps like a handcuff, and I got one of those magnetic bracelets made of hemitite. It's really cool...shiny and black-silver, with shiny pink and blue irredescent beads in between the prism-y ones. I'll take a picture.

After a bit more wandering as a four-some, we went back to my car to drop our stuff off. Ryan and I hit it a couple times, and then we wandered up to a sex shop...only to find that it was closed. Sex shop, closed during Pride?! Weird. So, we drove to another one. The place was amazing. I wish I weren't as responsible with my spending--which isn't really THAT responsible--because the amount of appearal alone made me drool like no tomorrow. The place was huge, and it reeked of fresh leather. Yum yum. The attendants were extra helpful. I was chatting with the younger woman there off and on throughout, and an older dyke helped Bridget into a waist cincher, knowing full well we weren't intending on buying it. We ended up walking out with some official waxplay candles. Ryan and Christine walked out with the same candles, as well as some cute underwear and a latex paint kit.

We drove to Chipotle and got some food. Then we dropped into Ryan's place, met his parents and his dog, and then met C&R's son and living quarters! We had a great time, chatting about how much fun the day was, as well as planning a date for the weekend after next! I got super tired towards the end though, and so we left around midnight. We got stuck behind an accident, and then got stuck behind road work...and then got home and passed the fuck out.

YAY YAY YAY YAY PRIIIIIDE!

Birfday!

Whewwt! Happy Golden Birthday To Me!

I can't say I get the sentiment of the whole golden birthday routine. Is there a specific thing you're supposed to do? Am I to be especially grateful to be born? Whatever the case is, I know what I've been doing: whatever the hell I want!

The past week has been crazy-go-nuts. Bridget and I have crammed a relationship's-worth of weirdness, dramaturgy, and difficult-to-handle-itude into the past seven days...and have lived to tell the tale! We'll stick with the less charged and more optimistic stories.

We had our first cook-out! Glen came over, and Kitty, he, and I made up a whole mess of food. And when I mean a whole mess, I mean deviled eggs, corn on the cob, garden salad, baked beans, Bridget-style potatoes, veggie kabobs, brats, turkey burgers, and chicken. With delicious locally-brewed beer and non-local Jim Beam and Mexican Brandy. It was an event, to be sure. We ended up saying up till around midnight, shmoozing and drinking and walking the dog. The next morning was a hung-over one. Wowwy.

And then I thought I had tuburculosis! When I woke with a swollen lymph node after a three day stretch of noticable yet inconsistant symptoms, I remembered Glen's story of how his father developed tuburculosis after being innoculated in some way with a derivitive of a bovine TB virus, one likely used to innoculate children. Then I (thought I'd) put two and two together when he said he'd just come back from Texas--where his parents live--and had swollen lymph nodes. One trip to urgent care--and one unnecessarily lengthy encounter with the rudest medical professional I'd ever met--later, I found out I had an abcess around/under my jaw. I'm still not convinced I don't have some very dramatic disorder...and lord help that bastard doctor-in-training if I end up getting teh TBs and don't die before the lawsuit goes through.

Yesterday was par excellence. I went hiking with M'lady and my parents at Rocky Mountain National Park. We arrived at my parents' house at 7:40 in the god-forsaken morning, filled up water bottles, grabbed some snacks, opened my birthday presents (a Camelback backpack, classy-ass hiking pole, and survival whistle from my parents! Thanks guys!!) and then hightailed it towards Estes Park. An hour later, we were exiting the van and entering the trail. The hike was nice and easy at first, with a gently trickling rivulet preferring our left side. Tree cover was plentiful, which was more noticeable on the return trip. We started at a brisk, yet leisurely pace. After the hike Bridget and I took the other day, I had faith that she would be able to keep up with my dad's speed, and indeed it wasn't once an issue that day.

After maybe a couple miles, the path opened up and got a bit steeper, and that was when the real Colorado hiking presented itself. As we ascended, the views got more and more magnificent. We spotted two rock climbers on the near-sheer rock face across the valley from us. The day was gourgeous, the sun on a sliding dimmer switch as the clouds shot past. There was a healthy breeze that kept any of us from having to take off more than our long-sleeved shirts, and it persisted through the rest of our hike, which again was most appreciated on the trek back, when it was time to rest as the sun beat down much hotter than before.

We made it up to our destination after only one false turn that took us about a mile off our intended course. The falls we stopped at were excellent for pictures, in more than one sense: they were taken at the half-way point of our hike distance-wise, at about the two-thirds mark exertion-wise, and in front of a massive, roaring crash of water. My dad took plenty of stock nature footage...for the time being, I'll just post still images.

Throughout the hike our order changed, with my dad remaining in the front the whole time. We had plenty of excellent discussion, with most of it focusing on marveling at nature's beauty and then trying to explain it through scientific inquiry. (I still contend that the reason butterflies got their name was because they tend to "flutter by", and my dad is inclined to agree!) My parents got to know Bridget quite a bit better. Were one to go just on appearences, it would be difficult to tell just how successful the interaction was, but from knowing that my mom had already had some time to get to know Bridget, as well as my dad being happy whenever I'm happy, the long, silent stretches and verbose, esoteric, at times comically blunt (Mickey Mouse files for divorce. His lawyer asks why he doesn't have a better reason than "she's crazy". Mickey replies, "I didn't say she's crazy! I said she's fucking Goofy!") conversation between the four of us indicated to me that Kitty was already part of the bunch, and nobody had to hold up any particular facade in order to make her feel any more welcome than she already was.

After our hike (and a brief snooze in the car ride home) Bridget and I went home to take a shower and discuss how things had gone. We returned to my parents' house to have dinner: wilted spinich salad, baked sweet potatoes, and steak. Down-home cookin' if I ever seen it! Desser was the classic: angelfood cake with strawberries and whipped cream. We sat around and chatted for a bit before excusing ourselves to go home and sleep.

When we got back here, we were so pleased about having survived the tumult of the past week and that the whole experience with my parents went off glowingly that we got all ramped up and couldn't get the hours and hours of sleep we had planned on. We ended up staying awake until a bit before midnight, playing videogames and reading webcomics and doing other cute and innocent couply activities.

And today, I woke up to my birthday! So far, Bridget and I have done nothing but laze around. I had cinnamon rolls made for my birthday breakfast, and we sat on the sofa and read comics as we ate them. Since then, I've done nothing! Nothing at all! Happy Birthday To ME!

Of course, I had to work on a bit of homework...I forgot that being sick and going through drama and surviving it and then being wildly successful during a relationship milestone and then having a birthday does not actually stop the progression of time. Damn.

Baby steps

Whew! Alright, maybe blogging about all the days we've been here so far is a bit overambitious. Let's just take this one step at a time!

Yesterday was a lot of fun. We finally got an almost full day of sunshine, with only a half hour of cloudiness with maybe 30 droplets of rain. I mowed the lawn! That was a lot of fun, actually. It was not without mishaps, and those added to the fun. Gareth has a gas-powered weed whacker, one of which I've never used. I thought I had it all figured out, but then it kept dying after about a minute, regardless of what I did with the throttle. The original plan was for me to mow while Bridget whacked, but that ended up not working out.

Not to be deterred, I started mowing. About 5 minutes in, I heard this incredibly loud clunking noise (you know, that unnerving sound that spinning metal blades make when they encounter something they weren't designed to cut?) and a few minutes later, I nearly pulled the handle of the mower off. The knob at the pivot point halfway between the grip and where the handle apparatus attaches to the machine had fallen off! Fortunately, I'd installed the grass-catcher beforehand, so I was able to take it off, dump the grass out, and find the knob. Unfortunately, I'd forgotten that there was a screw that went into the knob, and I couldn't find that.

At a loss, I searched through the garage to try and juryrig a fix. I found an unbent coathanger, and I made that work by sticking it through the hole and wrapping the whole thing tight 'round the handle joint. WooT!

In the mean time, Bridget was planting plants. I must admit, I was a bit jealous, as putting plants in pots is one of my favorite things, but then again, so is mowing the lawn, and it's better exercise. It was so nice to walk up to the deck to get some water and see a beautiful, scantily-clad lady, dirt under her nails, sun shining off her alabaster plains...just wonderful. Beyond this, it was a) incredibly productive, as we were both taking advantage of the sun AND doing things that needed to be done, and b) the perfect example of naturally-flowing alone time: we were each doing our own thing, and not directly in each other's presence, yet we were still connected. NICE.

Before all this, though, we'd gone shopping! Around noon we went to the farmer's market down the road. We were originally going to buy eggs and honey, but instead ended up getting eggs and delicious gourmet lime mustard. We decided that "voting with one's dollar" doesn't end at the product; it's also a vote for the process of making the product, as well as customer service, and when we remembered that the woman at the honey stand last week was kind of a bitch to us, we decided to take our business to the mustard guy, who was way chill and laid back. Yep.

Speaking of customer service, we are now Safeway members...but it almost didn't happen. Well, that is perhaps overly dramatic, but when we went to Safeway a couple days ago, we got the absolute worst cashier of all time. Having both worked in front of a register in the past, Bridget and I were appalled at Erica's demeanor. She was short, rude, and snotty. Granted, it was her third day, but this is no excuse to be a cunt. So, I did what I thought I'd never do...I called and complained. The woman I talked to was extremely apologetic--as to be expected--and I got off the phone feeling like I'd really helped out. I may have lost Erica her job, but I did the woman in front of us in line a favor: it was with this woman, thick-accented to suggest that the English language was not her first, that I saw Erica's shitty shitty shittiness first shine, and we thought we'd do this poor woman the favor she likely wouldn't do herself.

After the farmer's market, we went to Walgreens and Safeway, and outside the latter I saw Jeff Warshaw, my friend and philosophy teacher! This serendipitous occasion was awesome because I really wanted Bridget to meet him, but I had no idea just how I would pull that off. We chatted for a bit, and then we entered to get the last ingredient for the spiced-up almonds recipe Bridget found (which was almonds...dur!) as well as the components of my hippy scrub (sea salt, baking soda, and olive oil).

After the lawn and a long, scrubby shower, Bridget made her recipe (yum yum delicious!) while I dicked around on the computer. Not much else happened!

Now, for a quick grocery list of stuff we've done:

• Went out to get Mexican food with my mom: she got to know Bridget better, which is always good (maybe!)
• Went to the hookah bar and got reamed on the bill: SIXTEEN DOLLARS for two people to smoke one bowl? That's more expensive than weed! That'd be more expensive than acid!
• Walked around the CSU campus at night: que mysterioso!

Drake Road Farmers' Market

Apparently Colorado is the land of co-ops, locally grown vegetables, handmade goodies, and roadside stands.  Saturday morning Puppy and I gathered our ramshackle team of reuseable bags and set out for some serious grocery shopping at Whole Foods. On the way there I spotted the unmistakable flag of a farmers' market:  white tents, leafy greens, and Birkenstocks.  I yelled at Ben to aim the car that-a-way and, once we were parked and situated, immediately began milling with the crowd and sampling wares.  Live music played as we tasted wine, suffocated tiny chips in salsa, tried some yummy spreads, and interacted with the vendors. We purchased a few pepper and tomato plants, along with some herbs like lavender, chive, and catnip for the garden. I bought some dark chocolate desert pasta that I'm really excited to try. The market was just so effing cool! We already plan on stopping by next Saturday to buy some eggs, honey, and mead for our bellies. I enjoyed myself so much that I'm tempted to hit up every hippie market in a tri-county radius.

The first few days

Alright, we're going to try to keep up with daily updates as much as possible, but you know how that goes. First, to cover what we've done so far, since arriving! Maybe I can get Kitty to blog about what we did before getting to CO.

We arrived Thursday, June 4th at around 4 am. We were both a bit nerve-wracked and shot. I had made a comparable drive before, by myself even...but this time it was harder. I was wrecked but couldn't nod off while Bridget drove. My guts were all screwed up from eating nothing but snack food, fast food, beer, and red meat the previous week. Bridget had never been in a car for such a long time, much less driven such a sizable portion of it (I think we were about 50/50 at the end...she may have actually driven more, come to think of it!) Suffice it to say, we collapsed pretty fucking hard when we got back, but not before unloading all our stuff from the car. How responsible! (I must give Kitty credit, though. Taking the stuff out of the car before we went to bed was my idea, but I definitely pussed out when it came down to the fact. She insisted that we get that done. Good idea!)

Later that day, I went to class. Ethics was great; I've got it with Jeff again, and that makes me intensely excited. Our class also seems a lot more talkative than last semester's, which will be awesome. After class (each class is two hours! Weird!) I went to my parents' house. Nobody was there. I loaded up my car with possessions, got a couple plates of food for my and Bridget's mouths, and then returned. We ate and relaxed, both still pretty zonked, and then I went to my second class, English Composition II. I've got good feelings about that one too. It's blog-centric...imagine my delight! When I returned, I had the perfect plan: heading to Papa Murphy's, getting a pizza, popping it in the oven, grabbing some beers, and playing some videogames in our awesome new home.

Pizza didn't work. One was closed for good, and one was closed for the night; we didn't want to fuck around with delivery. Instead, we went and got some chicken, veggies, tortillas, and other tasties and made our first meal in the home: chicken fajitas! Yum yum! It worked pretty well. I suck at cooking; Bridget held her own just fine. We still got delicious food in our bellies with some leftovers besides. After that, the beer-and-video-games portion of the plan went into effect. We did that until bedtime!

Friday was pretty freak-productive as well. We went on a hike I've never been on, one I drive past on a daily basis when I'm going to school. Bridget met my parents, and that went swimmingly. We also dropped by Whole Foods and got the girl her extra-special hair goo. Before heading home, we stopped by my liquor store (yes, my. Discount Liquor 287 has won my patronage.) and got shpieled by a chick working for Fort Collins Brewery. We got a mixed pack of delicious beers (with two extra thrown in for free!) and bought a bottle of Johnny Walker Red. I will teach her to drink booze on the rocks....mmm, scotch scotch scotch. Once we got back from all everything, we dug around in the "garden", which was thoroughly overgrown with, well, all-everything. It took quite a lot of machete-ing and hoeing, and we actually got forced out by the sprinkler system, but it was a lot of fun to dig around in the dirt!

We DID IT!

We did it!

This I have decided will be the mantra of the summer. A few months ago, neither Bridget nor myself were 100% sure we could pull all this off. The desire was there, but the money and logistics seemed not to be. As is my style, I ended up flying by the seat of my teeth (mixed metaphors, anyone?) and rushing off to Iowa for the first leg of my trip. After not nearly enough sleep, I was to Duluth (after a stop in Plymouth to check out Nathan). We wrapped that place up, stem to stern, and headed out at the perfect time. Back in the TC we spent some time hanging with Martina and Nathan, and then Nathan, Kitty and I went to the Gay 90s to check out the drag show. We got pretty messed up and spent the night at Steve's house (THANK YOU STEVE!) and had a long and lazy morning upon waking. We played some frolf, got some food, and then we were off to Madison! Again, timing was wonderful, and we spent a couple days hanging out with Bryce and checking out Mad-town (as the locals have referred to it). Wednesday morning we left for Fort Collins, and about 18 hours later we unloaded the car into our new home and crashed hard. I woke the next morning, went to class, and returned to my summer home!

We did it we did it WE DID IT! This is the theme because, from here on out, we're better off than we could have ever expected. We have camradarie and companionship, time-tested, and the logicstical framework to pull off almost anything...that doesn't cost too much. So even if we sat around and watched TV the whole summer, WE STILL DID IT! And every additional thing that we do...we will have done it AGAIN!

We did it!

Greater than

You guys know that saying, "the result is greater than the sum of its parts"? Well, you may not, seeing as I'm pretty sure that's not the exact wording and I'm too lazy to fact-check right now, but the jist of the phrase is there: you take two or more elements and combine them, and the product of the process is much better than anything each element could accomplish on its own.

That's the theory we're working with here at The Sum is Greater. Much as most humans everywhere, the contributors here know how to get the most out of a group interactions. We thrive on the vibes they create and have perfected the fine-tuning of mood, the mouthfeel of experience. This blog is an outlet for these energies, letting us record our communal experience and revel in them.

Basically, expect to see a bunch of different folks, starting primarily with Ben and Bridget, talking about all the fun times we've had together. We may at some point establish a convention to determine exactly whose voice is being used when, but that bridge will be crossed when we arrive at it. In the mean time, enjoy!

Oh, and also, if you'd like to join this community, even if you don't have regular interactions with the current community members, by all means do! Let The Sum is Greater be a repository (not a suppository!) of all memorable experiences, so that we all might learn what possibilities are out there.

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