Action movie morning

Holy crap. Holy crap. So out of breath.

I was asked to open my office this morning because our receptionist is on vacation. The place is rigged with a pretty serious alarm system, so if you walk into the office and stay for more than 30 seconds without disarming the alarm, the motion sensors will go off and fire trucks will come.

I got a call late last night warning me that a courier service was coming to pick up an important package first thing in the morning. So it was really imperative that I be here on time, otherwise the courier will trip the alarm.

So this morning, I leave my house a couple minutes later than I wanted to, but still with plenty of time to get there. THEN.

1) My metrocard's expired.

2) I run to the machine. For the first time ever, I see a metrocard machine crash. Turns out all the machines in the subway station just crashed at that moment. My transaction was cancelled after 2 minutes of freeze time. I hear my train coming.

3) I run to the ticket counter and shove money into the teller slot. The woman tries to activate my card 3 times and fails, finallyl getting it right on the fourth try. I see my train leave without me on it.

4) The next train finally comes. And it's PACKED. So packed that I can't reach a pole to hang onto and have to steady myself by pushing my hands up against the ceiling. I figure it's probably just my car that's this packed.

5) I'm wrong. The train is full to capacity and is having problems moving. At the second stop into the trip, the train has trouble leaving the station. It jerks forward very hard a few times. Everyone looks around scared. It finally picks up.

6) I transfer from the F train to the A. The A train is apparently stuck right behind another A train. Which means it has to stop for about 2 minutes at every stop to give the train ahead of it time to move.

7) I finally get out of my stop, prepared to dead-sprint to my office, 7 blocks away. I'm supposed to be at work at 9:04 (when the elevator automatically turns on). The courier is supposed to be there first thing in the morning. Right now, it's 9:12.

8) I sprint my balls off.

9) I get to the elevator at the same time as a COMPLETELY unexpected FedEx guy, who is NOT the courier I was warned about. FedEx usually comes at 9:30, but he's early. If I would have gotten there 20 seconds later, the police and fire departments would have been sent over.

10) My boss calls me while I'm in the elevator to see if everything's cool with the courier. I had to tell him I wasn't there yet but I was in the elevator and everything's (hopefully) cool.

11) 2 minutes later, the courier comes. PLOT TWIST! The courier, a bike messenger girl about my age, recognizes my Seattle record store t-shirt. She asks me if I'm from Seattle. I explained that I wasn't, but I've been a few times. I then make a weird connection: one of my best friends from my high school spent a couple years bike messengering in Seattle. And female bike messengers are pretty rare. Turns out that my high school friend and this courier know each other.

...Okay, so I'm not sure if that counts as a plot twist, but it's pretty frickin' weird.

Phew.