Star Trek, A Wrinkle In Our Timeline

So, we were all going to play hookie from work today and see the new Star Trek.

We had it all planned out down to the last detail. Earlier in the week we had picked the 1:10 showing--the first DLP showing of the day--and planned to meet up at the office, get a little work done and then leave about 11:45 so we could have a leisurely lunch near the theater, stroll into the movie on time to get the best seats in the house and then kick back and let it wash over us.

So, we met at the office as planned and worked out our transportation caravan. Since the theater was a bit of a drive, everyone was taking their own car so they could head right home after the show. Being environmentally conscious, we worked through all of the calculations with Spock-like precision to ensure that there would be less net environmental damage this way than if we car-pooled to the theater, then all came back to the office to get our cars and then drove home from there. Or, maybe we didn't exactly do it in a Spock-like way, but at least in a Kirk-like way.

Anyway, we were set. And then this gardener guy showed up. He was supposed to have showed up the Friday before last, which he missed, and then again last Friday, which he also missed. And now, here he was, pulling into the parking lot at 10:00 AM on Star Trek Friday! No way!

We had instructions for dealing with him. We were supposed to wait until he was finished, write him a check for his work and then lock up the gate to the office parking lot. Only problem was that he was supposed to take at least two hours to do the lot and we only had an hour and 45 minutes left! Crap!

So, at 11:50 (already five minutes late) we went down to talk to him about writing him a check in advance of his finishing the work and maybe locking up the gate himself. But it turned out that he barely spoke any English. Apparently he was an ancient Korean form of gardener. So, we regrouped back in the office and went into planning over drive. It was noon now. The leisurely lunch was slipping away. Desperate, we decided to communicate with the gardener through sophisticated hand gestures and meaningful grunting in order to get him to estimate how much time he had left so that we could figure out how much to pay him. Then we would pantomime him locking up the gate and flinging the key back through the bars in the door so that we could retrieve it on Monday.

At 12:05 we went back down and found him already finishing up. Yeah!!! So, Sara cut him a check and we gave it to him and it turned out that the person who gave us the instructions got the guy's name wrong. And he could speak enough English to let us know. We ran back upstairs and cut him a new check. Now, it was 12:10 and lunch was totally out of the question. Any later and we would be starting to endanger our good seats. We rushed back down and... he rejected the check again! Wrong name again! So, we ran back up, changed the name, shoved a new check page in the printer and...it printed backwards. DANG! It was 12:20 now! The plan was in shambles. Desperate measures were called for. So, we raided the petty cash box, paid the gardener and then ran upstairs to get the key to lock up. And who had sneaked in through the front door while we were out back? The guy from our I.T. company. And what was he doing? Backing up the hard drives. AAAAARRRRRGGGGG!

It looked like curtains for our plan. But, being an I.T. guy, he understood that this was Star Trek we were talking about. Somehow, accessing his inner Scottie, he managed to do his twenty minutes of work in two minutes. We were out the door.

Anyway, we made it.