It isn’t easy to get my work team involved in team building exercises or outings or bonding things or whatever. We are the so-called geriatric team. When somebody mentions going out for a beer after work, we all scurry for home, veg out in front of the TV, and go to bed at 8:00 PM. Or something like that. I don’t want to say that team-building stuff isn’t important for baggy old folks like us but the truth is that we already get along well and treat each other with respect. Although we are certainly not above a little good-natured teasing. But the days of Technical Staff Meetings that start at 5:30 PM at the local watering hole are pretty much long over for us.

Today, we went on a team outing! It was arranged by our long-suffering, cat-herding boss. We took a trip to the Detroit Science Center to see the traveling Star Trek exhibit. Not all of our team members are Trekkies. A couple of us hardly know anything about Star Trek but we were game. What the heck, it was most of a day away from work, and for me, that meant a virtual extension of my vacation busman’s holiday. Although I did manage to do triage on my piled up email before we left this morning. A few real Trekkies who are not actually on our team tagged along.

I have a strange, minimal knowledge base about Star Trek. In the first place, when the original TV series came out back in the 60s, I am not sure that we even had a channel that carried it up there in Sault Ste. Siberia. We first got TV when I was two years old and for many years, we only had the CBC network, and then CBS. You had to have rabbit ears to tune either of them in with any great clarity. By the time we got cable TV, I was a teenager and busy with other things. I do remember little bits and pieces of Star Trek, including the major characters. Who doesn’t? Then. In the late 1980s, when the beach urchins were small, Detroit channel 50 showed Star Trek re-runs every Sunday evening at 6:00 PM. I would turn that on while I was cooking dinner and the beach urchins would hang out at the table in the kitchen drawing and whatever. Although I remember bits and pieces of plotlines, et al, it was mainly a pleasant background “music” to life at the landfill. And then, one Sunday, I turned on the TV at 6:00 PM, expecting to see yet another Star Trek re-run but it wasn’t there. Star Trek had been replaced by Star Search 90. A talent show. A pretty bad talent show. Without a gong. Alas. Star Search 90 became the new Sunday night dinner cooking “music”.

Today, I think I have become a Trekkie! Well honestly, I doubt if I will *ever* be a real Trekkie. But I had an absolute blast. My boss was in his element and he and some of the other Trekkies seemed to delight in educating a newbie (me) in the finer parts of Startrekabilia. Team-building exercise/outing/whatever? Yes!!! And I think that a few DVDs are in my future. Netflix, areya ready?

P.S. Mouse update. Thank you Jan. I hadn’t even thought about the possibility of a gas leak. That was a scary thought but I don’t think it’s that this time. The smell is in a very localized area and I think it’s abated a bit today. Mrs. Commander, it is not in the refrigerator. I took *everything* out of the refrigerator yesterday and cleaned it and threw a bunch of stuff away. Not because of the rodent, because I couldn’t remember what was in there before we left! I think you should write about that Garden City mouse-in-the-refrigerator experience some day!

P.S.S. Er, regarding the title, I referred to the exhibit as both “Star Wars” and “Starbucks” today. That last was when we were *in* the exhibit. Practicing to be an octogenarian? Hmmm.

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