Hi @Tim_Hoffman1,
I think this is a splendid idea! Something of a non-recurring timer or a “countdown clock.” The ways around this are a bit cumbersome, but I could see a tag value time set as a timestamp string, and a Timer Node that would compare the current time to the tag time, and fire if it is past that time. Again, it’s by no means an elegant way around the problem, and is similar to your second suggestion and may not be ideal for your use case.
I will pass this over to our engineers as a feature request. 
Thanks,
Julia