Chaos Attraction

Sherlock Escape Room

2019-09-08, 9:55 p.m.

I am now officially All Caught Up on posting entries from months ago, and now I am officially writing in real time! Whew and huzzah! Now I can go like...work on updating my October Daye fanpage or my next storytelling piece or just anything bloody else, right?

Before heading out today, I talked to Mom and established that yes, she did bring me up on watching detective shows and I blame my lovemap on her showing me Remington Steele from a formative age.

So today we went to the escape room in Vacaville. Both Sarahs bailed out on the whole thing at the last minute so it was just five of us there and in costume. Cameron came as Phryne Fisher, a.k.a. How She Usually Dresses. Robert came as Hercule Poirot and kept having issues getting his mustache to stick on. Janene had a great Daphne costume. And Scott elected to go as Eddie Valiant (“I thought about doing Remington Steele*, but I’d have to shave,” etc...), including actually buying a pocket Southern Comfort, pouring out the booze and replacing it with iced tea. So that answers that question. The photos of all of this are adorable, of course.

* I have since found out that he only saw the first two seasons of that show. I went looking for mine yesterday for costume purposes and then discovered that I can’t find seasons 1-3 but somehow have two copies of seasons 4-5, which I can only presume comes from Mom overbuying DVD’s again at some point. I offered him the extra one but have no idea if he is actually into this idea?

As for the escape room, this went MUCH better than I expected. You’re not supposed to take photos or tell what happens in the thing, but I will say the following:

(a) You’re not “locked in,” per se, but you’re supposed to figure out where Holmes is located and where he’s meeting via various puzzles set up in the room involving Holmes’s favorite things. There’s locks to unlock, codes to figure out, shit involving chess that I never dealt with or understood so don’t ask me what was with that bit, along those lines.

(b) I know that some folks do it in teams of two (this seems to get bonus points on the leader board on some level, but they take longer), but frankly, it seemed to work better to send 2-3 people to work on one puzzle and then have 2-3 (sometimes one of us would float about) working on another, because we’d figure out one bit and then turn around and figure out that others had done another bit.

(c) They do not do red herrings, so that’s a nice thing to not worry about. You are warned to not go around breaking things, getting into things that you’re not supposed to get into, breaking the furniture, etc. Or to form human pyramids, because I guess that came up? They also have the fun girl at the front desk basically being the room monitor that you can call up to ask for clues, which we did not do. She called us a few times, once to suggest that we (redacted) when we had the right idea about something, and I’m not sure what the other call was about. If/when you ever figure out the answer, you call her.

(d) I did a lot better at this than I expected to. Despite being brought up on mystery shows and reading a bunch of Agatha Christie, etc. back in the day, I almost never solved anything and only guessed right once in a while. I’m also terrible at problem solving at work (others have different opinions of this, but I maintain that I only have a few tricks and once the bag is empty I’m totally SOL). I have always assumed my brain was broken, like it is for certain other things in life like numbers, probable ADD, whatever else is likely. Though at lunch on Friday, Yemi pointed out that when she watches those things, she just turns her brain off and isn’t really trying to solve it, which might be what I was doing.
But overall, I actually did pretty well at the puzzle shit. I pointed out several things to folks, and mostly spent my time using my speed reading superpower to do a lot of detailed reading off a poster. This took even me quite a while since it’s small, in a dark corner of the room, and a lot of folks have the same damn name. After a while I was all, “yeah, I know what this is, we don’t even need to do the last one,” and I was right.

(e) At one point Janene and Scott were working on one puzzle and the rest of us had just figured out that someone had to do an amusing thing in order to do something, “Hey guys, look at Cameron (redacting the redacted)!” I said. Sadly for them, they did not look, because it was hilarious.

(f) We finished in 31 minutes, 41 seconds. This is not the overall best time ever--that’d be about 25 minutes--but we are so far tops for the month, team name (as per Tony n’ Tina’s mention of a gang) Stillettos. So seriously, we actually WON this shit and WELL.

Suffice it to say, everyone wants to do more of these games in the future. Robert and Janene have done 20+ of them, and the rest of us were all “it’s something we’d do but we had no friends,” but now we do. I look forward to whatever outfits we come up with to do vampire rooms and pirate rooms in the future. Cameron’s already dressed from the 20’s to do the Prohibition room. I assume Scott’s parents now know what to get him for Christmas this year as well.

After that, we went out for sushi and discussed random stuff (let’s see if I can remember it all.....): Posture. Diets (which admittedly made me space out in boredom because I cannot get interested in that topic). Escape rooms and other related activities. Whether or not I ever heard back from Jean (no) and if Cameron is interested in going to Little Shop (sounds like it?). I continue to be confused as to whether some folks are interested in doing things or if you just have to blatantly ask them or whatall there. Going to Europe (again, I got nothing to contribute to that). Middle children and whether or not they have issues (that’d be Cameron and Robert), and only children--turns out that’s me, Scott and Janene and I was all, omg, this is the most only children I’ve seen all together in my life! Also, looking up who has the same birthday as you. Cameron and Robert are two days apart and Janene and I are at least the same astrological sign if at different ends of it. Robert was all “I have to buy a lot of gifts in May” and I thought of my aunt complaining about same in April. Y’know, stuff like that.

Whether or not anyone is going to audition for Coney Island: So far definitely sounds like me and Robert. No commentary from Janene. Cameron said she got asked to work on the show behind the scenes but doesn’t know what she’s doing yet so she assumes “chief cook and bottle washer,” I was totally shocked at her NOT being in a show because I figured she’d be a slam dunk for the music teacher. I said that since it looks like most of the main/named characters are Jewish and I’m obvious shiksa and the only shiksa part is a music teacher...I’m just hoping for generic ensemble. Scott was all, “I dunno about juggling two shows at once.” I made no comment on this, but Robert said it’s common here and they did that last year, having tech week on one show while others rehearsed in the green room.

I was sad to leave everybody. That was fun.

After that I did my traditional “hit the library and then hike around the greenbelt while reading” workout. I really need to actually sit down and work on writing projects, but if Outside is an option, then there I go.

Later in the day, I went to Grocery Outlet, where I found the following random shit in addition to groceries:
(a) Blue butterfly wings, “one size fits most,” for $5.99. For that price I will buy pretty blue wings even if the are child size, clearly. They just strap onto your back. Now I need an excuse to wear them.
(b) A notebook with a balloon on it for Dawn.
(c) Spare headphones/earbuds for work in case my old ones die, for $9.99.
(d) Two USB plugs that go into regular outlets, so I can just leave one in the living room and one at work in addition to the ones that lay around in the bedroom and the one that travels around with me to other people’s houses. Laziness FTW.
(e) A Sharper Image Bluetooth Music Stream Microphone for $24.99. Pity my new neighbors.

Much to my dismay, I ended up getting bait-and-switched at the grocery store and had to be waited on by That Creepy Guy I Always Avoid. And he wanted to chat and make commentary about my items, during which he told me repeatedly that he can charge his phone through his car’s CD player. And when I said “yeah, I get it, these plugs are to leave in the house,” he kept saying, “no, you can charge it through your CD player, you don’t need it in the house." Now, I drove an old car for a lot of years and I am very sure that my CD player didn’t charge shit on my phone in the car, but even besides that, you never need to charge your phone indoors? So that dude was just as weird as I ever figured he’d be.

Then I came home to find a discussion online about how The Youngs don’t know how to work a CD player any more. I was all, wait till you hear about this guy...


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