The Great Escape Room in Tampa

This past Sunday I was locked in a room with 7 other friends and we had an hour to get ourselves out.  We ran around the room, pulled books and knick knacks off the shelves and pulled out our hair trying to figure a way out. This is not a plot for a scary movie, it was the Great Escape Room. 

So really I had the pleasure of joining my friends Never Have I Ever Tampa and company to experience the Great Escape Room in Tampa before it officially opens in a couple weeks. The premise of the game is: you are locked in a room for 60 minutes and Sherlock Holmes tells you that you have to work with your team to find clues hidden throughout the room and solve 4 puzzles to find your way out. It's part scavenger hunt and puzzle solving.

My team and I made it out just under 49 minutes. It's definitely a unique experience that I can't wait to bring my friends to! I actually wish I could just watch them all scurry around the room trying to figure it out. Since I already know where all the clues are and how to solve the puzzles, I'm sure watching them would be just as fun. I can't tell you how much fun it was trying to find all of the clues...  not to mention what a great feeling it was to solve the puzzles. They were a bit tricky! I am a nerd for these things. But everyone was so nice, the entire room cheered when each puzzle was solved. We even heard the other room cheering too. So much positivity, I love it.

There are are four other locations in Orlando, Miami, Michigan and DC. And now it's coming to Downtown Tampa! I can imagine how much fun it would be for birthday parties and team building!

If you're ever in the Tampa area and have an hour to spare, definitely check out the Great Escape Room and see if you can escape within the hour.

The Analog Clock

Eleven twenty.

It’s been 11:20 for weeks now. Months maybe. Neither of us wanted to take the time to fix the damn thing. Day in and day out we would look at that clock and clearly we see that it’s stuck. No more ticking. No movement whatsoever. Still, it reads 11:20 while time presses on anyway. There are other options out there to satisfy our need to know, so we walk away as we pull out our phones. How trivial it is to stop your day just to make it work. 

“I’d better change the battery. Tomorrow. Maybe she’ll do it first.” He thinks. 

“It won't work if no one tries to fix it. I’m not going to be the one to do it. I’ve done it plenty of times.” I think. Decisively.

Still, he walks right past it every day leaving me to sit and stare hoping that it’ll change. That it’ll start ticking again, like my heart beat. That the battery would be new, like a fresh breath into my lungs. That there would be movement, like the blood through my veins. That it’ll be unstuck, like my lips against your skin.

And every time we see that clock, we revisit the same question:

Will it finally work this time?

St. Pete Murals #6

Back alley behind 600 Block on Central Avenue

Mixtape: Because of You

Playlist with about 60 minutes of easy listening. Check it out here.

Saturday Morning

For Valentine's Day:

In an ordinary white, four-walled room, he sat in front of a not so ordinary girl. For almost two years he studied the way strays of her silky hair waved beside her temple to the crinkle between her brows when she was deep in thought. She was always deep in thought; in that brilliant, beautiful mind. He watched her fingers fondle the curve in the handle of the ceramic coffee cup before lifting it to her pink parted lips. 

Always three scoops of sugar and too much cream. Like her coffee, she was too sweet, too hot, too full of flavor and too strong. Strong willed. Strong minded. She didn’t know it. She was too busy contemplating existentially about this, that and the universe as the cream swirls in her cup. 

There wasn’t a sound in the room and they didn’t dare spare a word to break the peace. But there was music. A composition made of heart beats, rhythmic respiration and intravenous harmonies. A symbiotic symphony between lovers.

Her eyes darted around the room until she noticed his blanketing her. As if his glance disrupted whatever she was thinking, she froze. Her eye lashes swooping down. And there it is. She flashed that look. That look that made him fall in love with her in the first place. She bit her lip and let a smile crawled across her cheeks. She was bashful. Her eyes opened slowly, first looking down at her hands and then up until those brown eyes fell deeply into his. She was beautiful. 

They looked at each other for far too long. 

But long enough to know that one could not leave the other.