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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