Animation Nodes can I use action or NLA by name?

I would like build a simulation like a game engine has a typical trigger on collision run function.

I have figured out how to scale an object with some condition, but my art task is a bit more complicated. I would like to have a bunch of paint balloons falling and on say simply
if z <= 0

  1. move splash effect object to balloons position
  2. trigger a subprogram to attach an action by name to the splash object and play it, play a different action on the original balloon

what I can not figure out yet is storing a value for later. I read that actually is not a concept of this Animation Nodes tool, so its not fully a programming tool for art.

In relation to that I can not figure out how I would store a start time so I can make a stopwatch or delta time so I can feed the Action animation an alpha to do a Lerp function if I say need to feed the action frames

for now, if I remove the action from the object i can not trigger its animation, and if I leave the action on the object its all in keyframe space, so I would have to keep feeding its frame 0 until im ready to let it animate

Sample:

this is what I thought would work