Mission: Highly Unlikely

OK, I promised this story to someone, so here goes.

One fine day in the fall of 2006, my friend Jules and I and several others were invited to a dinner party (specifically, spaghetti) at her friend Katana's apartment in Vancouver on a Friday night.
Also among the invitees was another of our acquaintance, Josh.

Now, Jules never got the original email invite, but I gave her all the info, and she conferred with Josh, and it was arranged that we should pick up him and his roommate, Peter, and all drive into Vancouver together. Four people, Jules, Josh, Peter, and myself, having spaghetti at Katana's place. What could be more delightful?

Well, Jules and I got to Josh and Peter's dorm room and found it empty. Nothing to do but wait, so wait we did; I was getting a migraine, so I parked on the couch and tried to sleep it off, while she fired up the xbox and worked on some game or other.

After about an hour, Peter emerged from his room, wherein he had been napping. Oh, no, he said, Josh was at a drama rehearsal, and wouldn't be back for at least another half hour. But that was OK, we figured; we could still make it to Katana's on time.

Josh was late. But it was still OK. Right away, he started getting food out of the cupboard. Oh, he said, we were supposed to bring toppings for the pancakes.

Pancakes?

Oh, yes, dinner was going to be pancakes. He and Peter were both extremely excited about it.

Now, as you may recall, Jules never got the invitation; I was the one who had told her the menu was spaghetti. So, me against Josh and Peter, I conceded that I must have been confused. Pancakes it would be. We all piled in the car and set off, Jules driving, Josh giving directions.

Oh, he said, we need to be turning right.
Right? said Jules, but we're going to Vancouver!
Vancouver? said he, but they live in Langley!

This was a problem. We pulled over, and quickly discovered that Josh and Peter had in fact been planning to go to someone's house for a pancake party that same evening, and when Jules asked "if they needed a ride for dinner on Friday" they assumed it was the same party. Evidently, not.

We turned around and restored Josh and Peter to their dorm. Josh had told Katana he couldn't make it out for spaghetti, since he had the pancake event to go to, and Peter didn't even *know* Katana, so they couldn't exactly come along after all. They were sad. We were sad too.

Anyways, Josh printed us off a new map of where we actually wanted to go, and gave us Katana's number in case of emergency. Unfortunately, he wasn't 100% sure of her number, so I actually had *two* numbers, one of which would be her cell phone.

Jules and I set off again, now thoroughly late, but with a renewed sense of determination. My head was, by this point, splitting, and she was suffering from tendonitis in one ankle, so the suffering quotient was unfortunately high. Also, we wound up in the midst of Friday evening traffic. Not so fun. But it would be OK: we would have spaghetti.

We found Katana's building. Two buildings, in fact, side by side, and we weren't sure which one she lived in, and we couldn't find the visitors' parking, so Jules pulled up in the dropoff zone and rested her ankle while I hopped out and ran over to look for Katana's name on the intercom listing.

It wasn't there.

I reported back to Jules; she told her Katana's roommate's name, and I went back and checked for that. Still not there. So I ran over and checked the list on the *other* building. No luck.

At this point, I got out my phone and called Katana for help. It would still be OK.

The first of the two numbers was wrong. I tried the second, and was answered by a very nice gentleman who informed me that oh, this used to be Katana's phone, but she had it for work and she doesn't work here anymore, so it's not her phone now.

Fabulous.

Jules and I both wallowed in misery for a minute, and then decided we had had enough. It was after 8 PM, and we were both starving. We went out for dinner.

Then, we bought some ice cream, took it back to her place, and ate it with the brownies we had been bringing to Katana's place to have with the spaghetti.

Oh, if only.