At K.T. and Kevin's moving party a couple of weeks ago, T told me that he'd like to get together with Matt and I at some point - perhaps he could come over and make dinner for us? I agreed that sounded nice, and started making plans for a small dinner party. T interrupted and said that he'd prefer trying out a new recipe on just the two of us to start. "I can always get pizza for three of us if it's awful," he said.
Last week, he called to set up a time, and after I checked with Matt, I e-mailed him back to verify that Tuesday - yesterday - was clear on our calendars.
Yesterday was moderately hellish at work. We're down to the last week of a deadline - the project has to be done by Friday - and I spent most of the day going line by line with my manager through code that wasn't working trying to figure out why. Finally, around 4, we decided that the actual problem with in my manager's code, and he went back to his computer to go through his stuff a line at a time.
At 4:30, I poked my head in his office. "I've got a guest coming for dinner," I explained, "so I'm going to head on home. If you get it figured out, drop me an e-mail and I'll check it first thing in the morning." He nodded, and I went home. I spent a little while straightening up the living areas and hunting down placemats and napkins for three people.
Matt got home about the time I was finishing up. I told him about an e-mail I'd gotten from T in the middle of the day that had said he would call around six to make sure everything was still on. Matt nodded and went outside to turn on the sprinkler. When he came back, he said, "If T doesn't leave his place until six, that means he'll get here around seven, and we'll eat around eight?" I admitted that sounded like a reasonable estimate. Matt shook his head and went upstairs to log onto the computer.
Realizing that it was going to be at least two and a half hours until I had dinner, I decided to fix myself some popcorn. Just as the timer rang and I was dumping the popcorn into a bowl, the phone rang, and it was T.
He had to cancel.
Well, last minute emergencies happen without warning. I asked him what was wrong, and he told me that he didn't want to go into the gory details, but what little he did say sounded like his parents were the ones with the emergency and they'd asked him to come to their place and walk the dog. Why he couldn't walk the dog and then come over, I don't know, but I didn't ask. Maybe the dog is incontinent or something and has to be walked every half hour.
T wanted to reschedule for tonight. I don't handle sudden changes in plan very well, especially when I'm very tired, so I asked Matt if we had anything planned for tonight, and he said he thought tonight would be fine, and I passed it on to T.
Matt and I went out to dinner, and in the course of chatting over our dinners and trying desperately to catch the eye of our waitress, it occurred to me that tonight might not be fine.
Having left on time yesterday (which, during a deadline crunch when nothing is working correctly is too early) I really can't do that again today. In addition, I've got a doctor's appointment this afternoon and will probably spent at least an hour on hold with the benefits center trying to get my insurance number, thereby losing around two hours. I decided to give myself a list of things to accomplish today, and if I haven't got them done by the time I leave for the doctor, then I'll have to come back in to the office after my appointment. If that happens, I'll get ahold of Matt before I leave and have him call T to cancel. (Though my dad pointed out this morning that it's when you're working late that it's nice to come home to a ready dinner, so maybe what I tell Matt will depend on just how late I think I'll be running.)
At any rate, I don't blame T for cancelling - I'm sure that his reasons, whatever they were, were good. But I'm still slightly annoyed. Ah, well, them's the breaks. Here's to hoping things go more smoothly today.
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