I've Never Ridden in a Hot Air Balloon

A couple of weekends ago, I went to visit my friend, Kristina, in Ohio.  Kristina and I were besties way back in high school, but haven't lived in the same state since then.  It's really quite a remarkable feat that we are still friends, but I suppose there's a certain level of bonding that happens when you live together during your most awkward of years (aka high school). 

So, Kristina was very devoted to making sure we did things that I could add to this blog, which led to 4 jam-packed days.  Not everything we did was new – like the escape room (though in this one, we were literally handcuffed together and dressed in orange jumpsuits) and the whole belting the entire Wicked soundtrack as off-key as we could manage (sorry to everyone else in that car). 

And while I will someday (hopefully) get around to blogging about our other adventures, the first epic experience we did in Cleveland was hot air ballooning!  This has been on my bucket list for a long time, and while it was very expensive, I think we got a relatively good deal on it. 

We ended up meeting the people running the show at a high school and then hopped in their car to go find an open field to take off in.  When we got to the open field, they then started to put it together with the aid of a couple of the guys there with us for the ride.  They had the balloon bundled up inside the back of a truck and so they started pulling it out and it just kept going and going and going.  I knew the balloon had to be big but daaang.  It was twice as long as I had expected it to be. 

They connected it to the basket which was turned on its side and then started filling the balloon up with air.  This took a little while and finally they had it inflated and facing the right direction, at which point we basically just jumped in the basket.  The hot air is what then makes the balloon actually rise, so our pilot (I'm not sure what else to call him) started lighting the flame above us and we took off very smoothly.  I was surprised how quickly we rose and traveled away from where we had started. In a matter of seconds, the rest of the balloon crew were tiny little ants. 

Overall, the balloon ride was very peaceful and relaxing.  However, the flame did get rather annoying by the end of it. It's not really that far above your head and so when the flame is lit, it's REALLY hot. A couple of times I happened to be looking up when it was lit and my eyes would be in instant pain! But even if you're looking down, your scalp starts to feel like it's on fire if the flame is on long enough.  It's never really lit for more than a few seconds at a time so it's bearable but still…I can't say a burning sensation is ever a pleasant feeling.  Additionally, the flame is pretty loud. The combination of the sporadic heat and noise was giving me a headache by the end of the ride.

Being up in the balloon was definitely a unique experience. For me at least, it didn't invoke any kind of fear.  You know how sometimes when you're looking over the edge of a cliff, you get this weird tingly feeling shooting through your body that's like "Alert! Alert! You can die!"  (or maybe that's just me), but in any case, I never got that.  There was absolutely nothing scary about being in the sky inside a basket. Occasionally when I would stare down at the ground for a long time, I would start to feel a little dizzy from the viewpoint of looking straight down but that was really it.  The weather was absolutely perfect though, and we saw some really beautiful views.  It was cool seeing our reflection in lakes and our shadow across trees. We also saw some wildlife and being up so high, we could hear things below really well.  There were a few times where we heard dogs barking or children yelling but I couldn't see them.

We ended up landing in a muddy field with a TON of bugs which was super gross.  The landing was kind of cool though. We touched down and then bounced up a few feet and came down again and repeated a couple of times until we finally came to a complete stop. 

After everything was packed up (bugs included), we then had drinks where we toasted to life (don't worry mom, I just had sparkling cider). Apparently this is a tradition that everyone does after hot air balloon rides.  Long story short, the first ever guys to try out a hot air balloon ride were mistaken for aliens when they crash landed in some farmer's field.  So for the second time, they took up bottles of champagne with them so that when they came down, they could prove they were from this world.  I love how alcohol is apparently the symbol of Earth.

I've Never Gone to a Las Vegas Bachelorette Party

A good friend, and former roommate, of mine is getting married.

And girl. Loves. Vegas.

When I lived with her, she would go to Las Vegas frequently and as much as she and her sister tried to convince me to come along, I never did. Although they acted disappointed at the time, I’m going to venture a guess that after the weekend I finally spent with them they are retroactively grateful for my multiple declined invitations.

Her bachelorette party was a weekend in Vegas and this was one invite I couldn’t turn down. I had RSVP’d in the affirmative months before the set date but as it loomed nearer I started to have second thoughts. It was the weekend after we returned from our month long excursion in Europe, the only other girl I knew had backed out, and I was really tired. But because offending people is one of my biggest fears, I sucked it up and made the solo drive right after work on a Friday afternoon.

A giant mansion (80s themed… or maybe just really behind on interior updates) was rented and 20 girls slowly filled its rooms. I spent most of Friday afternoon and evening lounging at the private pool and thinking to myself, “this is awesome.” Why, I wondered to myself, had I even questioned this? A pool? Palm trees? A grumpy old man neighbor who hated us? It was perfect.

That night we did some fun, bachelorette-centered games that were adorable and very well executed. We got to know the bride and the groom a little bit, made some inappropriate jokes, and “oohed” and “awed” at all things wedding. Then we ate food and gabbed (because one doesn’t talk at a bachelorette party, one gabs) until we all agreed that it was late and we went to bed.

So far, this is wonderful.

Saturday happened, though, and kicked me so far out of my comfort zone that I needed to drive 4.5 hours back to Provo to find it again. The day started as lovely as the last had ended. I woke up before most, got myself situated at the pool with a good book, and immediately burned to a crisp: my regular summer routine. Girls trickled out of their rooms, some went shopping, others ate, napped, swam, etc. It was a beautiful, low-key morning. Then our first appointment came around:

POLE DANCING

To be fair, I had originally decided not to participate in the group pole dancing class. I had knee surgery last year and I wasn’t sure it would be good for me. At least that’s the excuse I gave when not signing up for it. The real reason, of course, being that I’m horribly awkward and uncomfortable with overt displays of sexuality.

When the time came, enough other girls had bailed on the whole weekend that there was an open spot and I was the only one not going. So, yes, I was peer-pressured into it. And I thought it would be a memorable blog post.

There’s not really too much I can say about it except that I was terrible. And that I was right to fake worry about my knee. In fact, I should have real-life worried about my knee because the poor little thing took a beating. Who knew there was so much crawling involved in sexual objectification? (Probably literally every other person in the world).

It was a sexy dance class with poles. We learned a routine and took turns performing it for the other half of the group. The varying degrees of ability were hilarious, ranging from me as a floundering beached whale to “break this $20 into singles, please!”-level talent. I’m not entirely convinced that every girl there was a novice.

We were also taught how to give a lap dance but I just spent most of that 20 minutes in the fetal position on the floor laughing. Let’s just quickly move onto the next item on the agenda:

FANCY CLOTHES AND DINNER

Self-explanatory.

The next activity was one I did not participate in:

THUNDER FROM DOWN UNDER

I drove a large portion of the party there but then I opted to return to the house instead of pay a ton of money for a strip show. Call me crazy, but I much preferred sitting alone at the side of the pool, listening to sad, emotional music, staring at the three stars that were brighter than the nearby light pollution, and planning overly cheesy romantic encounters with celebrities in my head. Admittedly, this was probably my favorite part about the weekend. I think I’m a closet introvert.

LIMO RIDE

An hour later, I joined the rest of the party for a limo ride up and down the strip. I was very much looking forward to this since I’ve never been in a limo. Unfortunately, I have still never been in a limo. Somehow the hot pink limo that was ordered was changed to a party bus. I do not think mine was the only disappointed face. We all rallied, though, and made the most of it. And by “the most of it” I mean I was car sick the entire time, they played club-like music that didn’t help the pounding headache and, oh my, alcohol smells like what I imagine Voldemort to smell like, which is to say terrible. There was also a lot of dancing (which has already been established as definitely NOT one of my talents) with strangers (who I hate). I think everyone else enjoyed it so that’s good.

DANCING

The final item on the schedule was to go clubbing. Now, mind you, it’s past 1am at this point. I’m old and tired and grumpy and sick and there’s no way I’m going dancing. Turns out I was not the only one who felt this way. I loaded up a few girls in my car (whose intoxication level is still undetermined) and we slowly made our way back to the house (slowed down by shiny slot machines, cat-calling men, and insane traffic). We got there and I made sure to park as close to the front gate as possible, already planning for my escape the next morning.

And my escape was swift. In the bright light of morning, however, my discomfort from the night before seemed laughable and I was actually sad to see the weekend end. I said my goodbyes to the lovely bride, her amazing sister, and the few girls who were starting to stir that early on a Sunday. I grabbed my adorable gift basket (with more phallic-shaped items then I knew existed) and headed home.

Although I sound like a huge grump, this was actually one of the most extravagant, well-planned, and fun weekends of my life. I’m not a Vegas person. I don’t think anyone who has met me would pretend to think so. But for one fun weekend I got to see how other people relax, blow off steam, have fun and build confidence.

It was a chance to learn, again, how unique and wonderful people can be. And how much I hate Vegas. J

I've Never Backpacked Through Europe

As most of you probably know (since Amy and I basically talked about the trip nonstop before we left), we went on a month-long extravaganza through western Europe.  We didn’t do the whole hostel thing, so maybe it wasn’t the true backpacking experience, but we did literally only take a single backpack of luggage. 

There were definitely good and bad things about the whole backpacking trip setup.

Amy and I all ready to start our trip.

First off, we learned fairly quickly that even with the limited space, we still took way too much stuff and I think we each threw out some of our luggage before the end of the trip.  Having to carry that backpack to and from where we were staying was THE worst part for me (just ask Amy).  Also, the first cities were unbearably hot and then London and Dublin were rainy and cold, which makes the whole clothing thing difficult.  Also, laundry.  We tried to do laundry in Florence and thought we were clever buying laundry soap at a grocery store so it’d be cheaper. Turns out it was fabric softener but we didn’t know when we bought it since it was all in Italian! 

Amy at the Trinity College library

We used public transportation to get everywhere.  So many planes and trains and buses.  I think we were a little public transportationed out by the end of the trip.  If you ever want to get us riled up, just mention the bus we took in Venice. I have never been on anything so crowded before. We weren’t sure if we were even going to fit on the bus when we first got on, and then a couple of stops after we got on, another 20 people (at least) got on the bus. They just kept coming and coming and all of a sudden I discovered that I do apparently suffer from claustrophobia.   Also, people who use public transportation really need to work on the whole deodorant thing.  Yeah, it was gross.

We also used Airbnb for the first time on this trip.  Our place in London was amazing! The place had 2 bedrooms, a kitchen, a living room, and everything we could possibly need, including guidebooks and maps. We were so grateful to not have to share a room for those few nights (we were a little sick of each other by that point).  Our host was so cute and he made us homemade bread and he also bought us fruit and other breakfast food.  He was so helpful with directions and even printed our plane tickets to Ireland for us. 

Amy and I eating Gelato

The place in Dublin was a different story though. We had reserved the place a month or so before our trip with this guy and a few days before we were supposed to arrive in Dublin, we tried emailing him about getting the keys.  But he never responded after multiple attempts.  We landed in Ireland in the late evening and still hadn’t heard anything from him.  So we found a pay phone, and after getting very frustrated and having to ask someone how to work it (how were we supposed to know to dial a 0 first?), we finally called him and…he didn’t answer.  We ended up just taking our chances since we didn’t really have much choice at that point (it was pretty late), and caught a bus to the apartment. When we got there, Amy ended up finding the keys underneath a rock, so we helped ourselves in and ended up staying the 3 nights, the whole time feeling a little bit like we had broken in...We were half expecting him to show up unexpectedly one day because he forgot we were there.  We never did hear from the guy – Amy thinks maybe he died which is a little morbid. It was very strange, though, and for a couple of hours there, we really thought we might be sleeping on the street that first night.

Me at Notre Dame

Overall, though, the trip was so amazing! We stayed in 7 cities: Barcelona, Rome, Venice, Florence, Paris, London, and Dublin.  And we got to see so many things.  5 different countries in the course of a few weeks definitely keeps you busy.  We saw La Sagrada Familia, the Colosseum, the city of Pompeii, the Cathedral of Notre Dame, the Harry Potter studio (so awesome!), a play at the Globe theater, Stonehenge, and got to kiss the Blarney stone (in the pouring rain I might add) just to name a few of my favorites.  My least favorite? Definitely Buckingham palace. I still get angry thinking about how long we stood waiting to see the changing of the guard when turns out you can't see anything anyway! And if you want to get Amy angry, just ask her about the Trevi fountain being closed for construction. :) 

Amy and I in London

We also got to meet a ton of people.  We met a crazy lady in Barcelona who repeatedly told us how cold some pastries were (“Frío frío frío!”), a waiter in Florence who was totally in love with us, a store owner who gave us free keychains in Paris, a driver in Ireland who repeatedly told us the rain was "RELENTLESS!" (now one of our favorite phrases), and some crazy drunk Australians who we had dinner with.  We also ran into some LDS missionaries in Ireland who gave us directions, which was fun.

London and Dublin were definitely our favorites.  Maybe it was just the cool accents and the fact that we could actually communicate with the people there but I loved them.  I guess the beautiful, green rolling hills scattered with sheep didn’t hurt either.  Ugh. I already want to go back.

I've Never Eaten Snails

While we were in France, we ate a lot of super delicious food and we ate some things that most would not consider food. One of those things was escargot. Dictionary.com defines it as “an edible snail.” UrbanDictionary.com defines it as “the snail body that comes out of a snail shell- looks like snot (a nose booger).” And Desiree defines it as, “oh, gross.”

My Escargot from Paris

I, however, am a better person than UrbanDictionary.com and Desiree so I ordered it and ate it.

All of it.

Every single last, slimy, booger-like snail body that I had to rip out of its shell with my bare hands (I was given special torture-like tools meant to assist me but I couldn’t keep the shells from flying off the table to I resorted to my hands, like a savage).

Conclusion? It was actually pretty good. Maybe not my new favorite food, that spot still belongs to Nutella and peanut butter, but definitely something I will order in the future.

Oh, and here’s a video of me eating them. It’s a pretty anticlimactic video but so was my experience eating them. 

I've Never Ridden a Horse

For the past 26 years, the number one thing on my bucket list has been to ride a horse. There’s no real reason that it took so long to happen. I’m not scared of them, I’m not from a big city with no horses, and my family was never against it in anyway. I just never really had the opportunity, or perhaps it was divine intervention?

Me and Horse: A Selfie

For my 15^th birthday by parents gave me horseback riding lessons. My best friend at the time was taking them and I had gone out to the stables with her a few times. I was not allowed to actually ride the animals but I got to help brush them, braid their manes, etc. Then, much like my 3^rd grade gymnastics instructor, the lady who ran the stables up and moved away with no notice. I don’t know if she stole my parents’ money or just stole my pony-ridin' dreams. Either way: messed up, lady!

So in response to the awesome Bucketlist Birthday Bash I threw for her last year, Desiree arranged for me to go horseback riding for my 26^th birthday. Scheduled for the Saturday after the 18^th (my birthday… for future reference), it was beginning to look like my horseback riding dreams would be dashed again when it rained every single day in May. We cancelled and rescheduled for the next Saturday, hoping it would clear up by then. All the weather apps kept us guessing for days. It would predict sun for the day, then a few hours later, change to thunderstorms. Finally around Thursday everyone seemed to agree that Saturday would be a perfect, sunny day.

As the anticipation grew, so did the anxiety. A couple friends (a term I use hesitantly in this context) decided it would be great fun to freak me out about the upcoming event. Although I logically knew they were messing with me, their made up stats about bucking horses, horse-related deaths, and the aggression of these enormous beasts began to get to me. Then I ended up puppy-sitting last minute for my sister. The night before the ride was bound to be filled with excitement, anxiety, and much tossing and turning. This was not helped by the addition of a whining puppy.

Desiree, me and Shooter.

But the morning came and before I knew it I was standing not two feet away from an enormous horse. After expressing my concerns and lack of experience to our young guide (we think she was 22ish), she told me not to worry and that they would put me on the kid’s horse, Shooter.

Turns out Shooter was the biggest horse there, which intimidated me for a minute until I remembered that inexperienced surfers use longer boards and that the smaller horses were probably more dangerous and then I thought, why am I comparing horseback riding to surfing? They're nothing alike and I’m terrible at surfing! And while my mind was being ridiculous, I suddenly found myself standing next to this giant beast with one foot in the stirrup.

Just mounted

From there, everything was amazing.

Geeking out with excitement

Just one of the breathtaking views

Getting on the horse (with the help of a little stepping stool), getting my feet in the stirrups, directing the animal, going up and down rocky terrain… it all seemed so natural. The other two people who had signed up for the same time slot never showed so it was just me, Desiree, and our guide. Shooter was real old and liked to lag behind. He would occasionally just stop for no apparent reason but I think he was just tired. To be fair, Desiree and our guide are both tiny little girls and poor shooter had a heavier load than he was probably used to, being nicknamed the kids’ horse. But, regardless, he carried on like a champ and even trotted a few times, which wasn’t horribly comfortable. The views were amazing and there was something surprisingly fulfilling about getting to the top of a small hill, even if it was Shooter doing all the work.

The start of the ride

In the end, I walked like a cowboy for about an hour and have been fine ever since. I think my considerable time on a bike actually helped with the soreness. I loved being on a horse so much, though, that it’s probably a good thing I didn’t experience it as a youth. I probably would have turned into one of those girls who was obsessed with horses and begged my parents to get a pony and been a real brat about it. As it was, I was just a brat about less expensive things. 

Giving Shooter some sugar

I would say this was one of my better birthdays. Being closer to 30 than to 20 isn’t looking so bad from up here. 

I've Never Done an Escape Room

Last month our dear, good friend, Lauren, came to visit! 

We're the three best friends that anyone could have.

Having lived in Provo for four years, she is very familiar with what our fair city has to offer so we were hard up to find places to go and things to do that would be new and interesting for her. But we, more or less, succeeded. We didn’t take many pictures and it’s because we choose to live in the moment and not on social media (bah! Yeah right, we just got distracted and forgot to take pictures).

One thing we got really into the week she was here was escape rooms. We got so into them, in fact, that we did two! An escape room is exactly what it sounds like: You and some friends are locked in a room and given one hour to decipher a staggeringly large number of clues in order to get out. 

The first one we did was in Salt Lake and it was hard. Really, really hard. So hard that we didn’t finish. BUT we were only two clues away so while my sister, Hannah, was fighting off the worker who came in to kick us out, we solved the last two and finished. So even though we technically didn’t “win,” we still consider ourselves winners. No matter what Jeff says. Jeff sucks.

Official Team Name: "Hot Canadian Dan and his Foxxy Ladies"

We had such an amazing time, we did a little more googling and found a brand new one in Provo called “GETOUT Games.” Dan couldn't join us for this one so it was just the Foxxy Ladies. 

Although it’s the same premise, this one had a very different feel to it. The clues were more intuitive and “process of elimination”-y, as opposed to the random order of things in Salt Lake. Also in Provo you’re racing another team in the room next door. The other group happened to be a group from our ward so we were extra motivated to kick their butts. Which we totally did.

Winners!

I won’t go into too much detail here because I want every single person reading this blog (that’s basically you, Mom) to try an escape room and it’s so much more fun if you go in blind. Even the first one where we finished a minute over the time limit gave us all a sense of real accomplishment. It’s a fantastic feeling to finally unlock a desk drawer after 20 minutes of frustration. And, surprisingly, even more exciting when that desk drawer reveals another lock.

It was a great find and we are really happy we got to share it with some of the greatest people you’ll ever meet.  

Hannah, Rachel, Lauren, Desiree, Amy, and Wallis: Champions Over All the Land. 

I've Never Been Fly-fishing

Me with a fish!

For whatever reason, fish creep me out – like a lot. Something about the feel of them and the way they never blink, and their gills just seem so unnatural to me... However, I wanted to try fly fishing for some reason.  So a guy in my ward, Jon, ended up taking me who is an avid fly fisherman.  Turns out fly fishing is really hard – Not that I was expecting it to be easy, but I was particularly bad at it. 

Me in my "cute" waders

I’ve only been regular fishing once, so I’m definitely no expert on any type of fishing, but fly fishing was extremely different.  Fly fishing doesn’t use live bait, which was a welcome difference. No live worms hanging out of the fish’s mouth after you catch it which was gross.  You also catch a lot more fish with fly fishing.  You just keep casting the line and letting it ride down the river over and over. And if you aren’t catching anything, you just try a different part of the river and chances are good you’ll find some fish there.  The fish don’t bite directly on the hook, which was a little difficult for me. The bait is a few inches from the hook, so you have to pull the line hard and quick when you feel a fish bite in order to hook it.  If you’re too slow or don’t pull it the right way, the fish gets away.  This happened to me a lot.

I got to wear a cute little pair of waders (can waders be cute?), which made me feel a little bit like an Oompa Loompa.  And then we trekked around the river.  I’m don’t have a lot of mass and so whenever we were crossing the river in the deeper parts, I thought I was going to get swept away. Often the bottom of the river would be extremely muddy, too. There was one time where I took a step and my foot sunk an entire foot into the mud! In my effort to pull my foot out of the mud, I ended up losing my balance and fell backwards into the water.  Jon happened to turn around right after this happened (luckily) and I was just chillin’ there in the water like I had just wanted to take a break (or perhaps a mud bath?).

"Please hurry and take the picture!"

Jon was great, though, and kept telling me how awesome I was doing (he was just being nice), but I still did catch a handful of fish.  Most of the ones I caught were little baby ones, though, so I’m not sure what that was about.  I did hold one fish for a picture as you can see, which of course involved lots of squealing on my part (I’m kind of embarrassing sometimes).  The fish was being super inconsiderate and wouldn’t hold still while I was trying to pose for a picture.

Overall, it was a lot of fun, though! My arm ended up being sore the next day from casting the line so much, but other than that, no damage.  Also, the first thing Amy said to me when I got home was that I didn’t smell great, so I guess that mud bath worked. 

I've never...had miracle berries

Miracle Berries

I realize that "miracle berry" kind of sounds like it might be similar to say a "special brownie" but I promise (mostly for my mother's sake) that it's not.  I mean, you can buy these miracle berry tablets on Amazon so it's obviously not that sketchy, right?

The tablets

It's an actual berry from West Africa (I think?) that when eaten, binds to and blocks your tongue's sour/bitter receptors so nothing tastes sour anymore.  So all you taste is the sweet factor and basically it makes everything seem way sweeter than normal.

A couple of my friends bought a bunch of these tablets and had a miracle berry party where everyone took one and then just indulged in a ton of different fruits and other random food like cheese and hamburger meat with barbecue sauce. A few people even tried balsamic vinegar. 

The lovely setup of fruits and other food

You can't just chew the tablet. You have to move it all around your tongue and let it slowly dissolve.  After it dissolves, it's effective immediately so you can just start stuffing your face for the next 20-30 minutes until it wears off. 

The beginnings of the taste testing

It was incredibly fascinating and everyone should buy some of these to try at least once.  All of the fruit tasted a million times better than it already does.  I think oranges and kiwis were my favorite with this miracle berry effect.  Soo good and soo sweet.  You can straight up bite into a slice of lemon and it just tastes like a really good batch of lemonade.  No unattractive puckering of the lips -- just pure deliciousness in your mouth!  All of the acidic fruit did still rip my tongue up a bit, so don't go too crazy with the lemons because you'll probably regret it later.

I've never... played wheelchair basketball.

I'm currently participating in this mentoring program that pairs you up with an 'at-risk' youth around ages 10-13.  And once a month, there's a group activity that is organized by the program.  This time it was wheelchair basketball.  I was kind of wondering if playing wheelchair basketball just because we can is offensive to people actually in wheelchairs but I hope not.

But in any case, I wouldn't say I was super worried about my skills as a wheelchair basketball player just because I was going to be playing with a bunch of 12-year olds.  It wasn't going to be competitive.  But I was still prepared to be absolutely horrible. Basketball is the one sport growing up that I just could not play to save my life.  My freshman year of high school, one of my good friends convinced me to go out for the high school team with her.  There weren't very many going out for the freshman team so I think pretty much everyone who went out that year made it.  However, I went to one tryout and had one of the more embarrassing experiences of my life.  Turns out I couldn't even maneuver a very simple layup and one of the coaches pulled me aside and gave me my own personal lesson during a good portion of the tryout.

Wheelchair basketball actually ended up being pretty fun, though it was also very difficult.  Turns out shooting from a sitting position is not the easiest (or maybe I'm just weak) and I never really figured out the whole dribbling thing.  You have to throw the ball up in the air and out a little bit and then while it's bouncing you wheel forward and grab it and repeat.  I just kept running into the ball with the wheelchair or throwing it too far out in front of me so someone else grabbed it.  

Everyone also kept running into each other.  Luckily they strap you in so you won’t fall out of the chair when you are all grappling for the ball and the chairs are designed with the wheels angled out so nobody’s fingers will get smashed. In any case, nobody was very good and I think only 1 basket was scored the entire game.

I’ve never… made an iron on t-shirt

And I suppose I still have never successfully made an iron-on T-shirt.

A month (or two…) ago we went to Comic Con and because we’re nerds, but not nerdy enough to be cool and go all out on a cosplay extravaganza, Desiree and I decided to make T-shirts.

On our way home from Friday’s Comic Con experience, we stopped at Walmart to buy shirts and iron-on-fabric material, which I didn’t even know existed. Desiree found an idea for a T-shirt that said, “My patronus is a Tardis” which is just a perfect mash-up of our two nerdiest loves. She immediately went to work designing her T-shirt and I kind of forgot that that was what I was supposed to be doing and dozed off.

D-Ray's awesome shirt and our creepy line friend. 

When I heard Desiree printing her design, I snapped out of it and began working on designing my t-shirt. I couldn’t come up with anything. Everything was either way too complicated or cheesy or horrible. So I decided to just go all Doctor Who and keep it simple.

Because I never really know how t-shirts are going to lay on me, I decided to avoid any uncomfortable or awkward placement by just putting a small image where a pocket would be: A TARDIS and the phrase, “Timey Wimey Detector.”

 It’s a Doctor Who thing and if you don’t get it, I will not judge you because I fully admit that this show isn’t for everyone. It’s not even worth explaining but trust me, it’s adorable.

I couldn’t figure out how big or small it should be so I decided to print a bunch of sizes and then decide when it was time to put them on the shirt.

Desiree had finished her t-shirt by this point and it looked perfectly amazing (see above image) so I was filled with excitement and urgency (because it was super late and I was awfully tired). I printed out a test sheet on regular paper and it looked great. So I put in the special paper and hit print. It came out looking perfect… except for one teeny, tiny little flaw: I forgot to print it backwards. It has to be the mirror image so that it irons on correctly.

By this time, it was very late, I was very embarrassed, and I was really just desperate to get this stupid thing done. So I tried to find a way to print the mirror image and I couldn’t. I’m googling it, I’m looking through the help tools, looking in the printer options, nothing. So I decided to take a screen shot of it and then just reverse the picture, because I know how to do that to images. It works! Looks great. But now we’re down to just one piece of special paper because we had given two to Cat, Desiree had used two, and I had already totally screwed up one.

So I grabbed the last sheet and the color on the grid on the back is different. The rest were red and this one was blue (or maybe the others were blue and this one was red? Either way: wrong). Desiree assured me that it was the same thing so this next snafu is totally on her head.

I printed it out, backwards and everything, feeling confident. I pulled it out of the printer, held my breath and…

Yup. Those are spell-check squiggle lines. Because I’m clearly a moron. I decided I could cut around them because, much like I feel writing this post, I was so over it and ready to go to bed.

I cut it out, put it on the shirt, ironed, and then peeled it off. And it was white. Not blue like a TARDIS is supposed to be. But white with some blue peeking in from behind. Desiree is confused, I’m yawning and not really surprised because what has gone right for me as I attempt to do this?

Incredibly long and uninteresting story short: we think that the blue (or red?) backing was meant for dark clothes or it was bad, either way. Fail. So we tried again on some spare paper, tried to iron it on over the white disaster, it ended up looking all water color-y (which was actually pretty cool) and Desiree laughed heartily at me although I still contend that a large majority of the blame is on her.

trying to fix it

final product

my "don't even care anymore" crazy eyes

Moral of the story: don’t let me anywhere near an iron and a t-shirt at the same time.

Oh, and I did not wear it to our Saturday Comic Con day.