Saturday, January 30, 2016

Real Life Nancy Drew

With all of my siblings officially out of the Utah area, I have started to remember why I used to keep a blog. It was the best way to tell them all my funny, interesting stories at once without needing to remember which ones I've already told. Nobody likes repeat stories but we also don't like to be out of the loop. It's a delicate balance.
I'm officially 22! It's both miserable and magical. It's like I'm happy, free, confused, and lonely at the same time but in the best way. Don't worry if you don't really understand what that could possibly feel like. I've learned it's something you can only feel when you are 22. Oh and single. None of my married or engaged friends understand it either.
For my actual birthday I just had a super cool party. And I'm using cool in the way that like the cool kids use it for the first time in my life! I had a bunch of people filling my tiny apartment eating Caesar's pizza and chatting. Not one single board game was pulled out the whole night. I'm pretty sure I've completely fooled all of my ward members into thinking I'm actually a cool kid! It's a pretty exciting feat but between you and I, I'm not sure how much longer I can keep up the charade. The highlights of the party were both the delicious cake I made and the playlist of music videos on the TV which had T-Swift's 22 coming up every five songs. I know the cake doesn't look too exciting but it was DELICIOUS. Imagine a sugar cookie turned into a cake and you'll have some idea. For the first time almost all of the cake was completely eaten by the end of the party. It made me very happy.
So for my real birthday celebration, where my nerdy self got to shine, I convinced a bunch of my friends to do a getout game room with me. It wasn't really that hard to convince them since my parents kindly footed the bill. College kids do anything when it's free. The idea of the getout games is pretty much solving a Nancy Drew game but in real life. There are a bunch of pictures on the walls with secret codes hidden within them, drawers that need to be opened to get certain things, and all kinds of different locks. Here's the puzzle room we chose:
Intensity on a Chain is a fun and thrilling experience unlike anything you've ever done before. You need to solve the fun puzzles, find the key and escape, but there's a catch: chained to the wall in the room is a ravenous zombie...and he wants to eat you! Did we mention that his chain extends a little longer every 5 minutes?!! 
Not all of the rooms had zombies but I mean, once you read that you could have a zombie trying to eat you the whole time you're trying to solve the puzzles, how do you choose anything else?
I assumed I'd be super great at solving the puzzles because I've literally played more Nancy Drew games than I can remember. I absolutely love solving puzzles. Once we got in there though, I did not help solve a single puzzle. Not one. Am I disappointed in myself? Maybe a little bit. But I did certainly help inspire my smarter friends to solve their puzzles and I was a great distraction to the zombie. I kept yelling at the zombie to calm down and to back up. Turns out I'm super bossy when I'm scared.
In the end, with quite a few hints of help from the "zombie expert," we managed to cure the zombie and escape the room with only 15 seconds left. It was a super fun experience and I want to try out all the different rooms now. I'm mainly really hoping that with a couple more Nancy Drew games and no zombie attacking us, I'll suddenly turn into the super sleuth I think I am.