29 May 2008

Mass over volume

Iridium is the densest material there is.

Yes, it is. Don't argue.

Okay, fine... I know as well as you do that there are denser things in the universe. The densest matter according to conventional physics is the whatnot that makes up a neutron star - aka, neutrons - but now scientists are of a mind that even neutrons may not be the densest thing ever, since it's possible that they can be disrupted under certain extreme conditions to form quark matter, and this quark matter is the densest material imaginable. (Go ahead. Try to imagine something denser than a quark. Go on. Do it. See? Not easy, right?) But under normal earthly conditions - standard temperature and pressure and all that jazz - and without going subatomic, it's all about the iridium, baby.

What modern science has failed to recognize, however, is that there is something even denser than iridium, neutrons, and quark matter put together. And that is me.

Let's hop in the WABAC Machine and set the dials for early 2007. My company had just hired a girl to work in one of our remote locations somewhere down south, and she was coming up to the cold, cold north to visit the mother ship with her boss.

This girl - let's call her Zeeba - had accepted the job offer a few weeks prior. My boss had shown my buddy and me her picture on the internets and he quipped, "We hired someone for you, Saru!" She was cute and all, but the picture was some sort of sorority picture, and at the time I didn't cotton to no sorority girls. (Of course, now I watch Greek on the TiVo, so my opinion of the sorority girls has since been revised, but that's neither here nor there.)

So Zeeba and her boss showed up to meet everybody and see the place. They stopped by my office where on my whiteboard I had drawn a picture of a little tree with a gravestone beside it and a caption that said something like, "My True Love." This referred to a photo I had seen in a Northwestern University yearbook from 1930, in the corner of which was a very modern-looking girl, and I spent an entire weekend trying to find out who she was before I realized I was crushing on a woman who has to be at least 90 years old now, if she's even alive. I explained this to Zeeba when she asked what the drawing was all about, and was met with that expression where you're trying not to make any sudden movements as you back slowly from the room. Nice first impression.

Then Zeeba's boss said, "Saru likes to draw monkeys. Draw her a monkey, Saru!"

So I did. Unfortunately, it came out looking like an angry, ugly little simian sporting fists of rage. Nice second impression.

That night after work a group of us went out for sushi and beers and lots of laughs. Lots of laughs. The next day I sent an email to one of Zeeba's coworkers in Dixie that said, "Yeah, too bad she's smoking hot, AND funny, AND has a great personality, AND likes beer... I mean, someone ought to sit her down and tell her that perfection is NOT an attractive trait to have. Da-DAMN!"

Let's move the WABAC ahead a few months, to July, when I had to go south of the Mason-Dixon line to visit a chicken massacre for work. Generally when I go to these places I end up sitting in the hotel room with some Taco Bell, but Zeeba was free that night, so we hit the town. I felt a smidge of trepidation on account of being an awkward dork (especially when attractive women enter the picture) but we seemed to hit it off right from the start. I discovered many things about her that night, like the fact that she comes from a family of pirates - magic pirates! - and that we pretty much share the same sense of humor. So, yay.

After dinner, we stopped by a bar that had karaoke out on their patio. The place was crowded but we managed to score a couple of seats on the plastic patio furniture near the entertainment. As we sat there drinking beer and laughing at with the drunken crooners, I felt my chair dip a bit at one point, the legs sort of splaying slightly outward in the summer heat. (It was one of those cheap molded plastic chairs, probably made of low-density polyethylene because it could not handle a mere 93°F, or whatever it was that night.) A sturdier aluminum frame chair became available at one point and Zeeba suggested I switch seats, but I decided to tempt fate and stay in my chaise, ducking and bobbing to the music. The moral here is that fate cannot resist temptation, because before I knew it was happening, the chair collapsed under me.

Suddenly this big hulking jock-type guy was standing over me, asking, "Are you okay?"

"Get the hell away from me!" I thought of this jocky fellow. "You are totally cramping my style!" Zeeba, in the meantime, was crouching beside me, laughing and laughing and laughing.

Of course, I don't actually have style, because after a couple more beers, we drove to my hotel where...

...I dropped her off at her car and went to my room without so much as a hug or handshake. (Luh-HOO-zer!)

And now, let's hop back into the WABAC machine and head on over to November, 2007, in the days leading up to my company's Holiday Party.

As you may remember from yesterday's entry, Zeeba has sent me an email asking if I were attending the Holiday Party because she had received special dispensation from her boss to attend, but she only wanted to go if people she liked were going to be there - so, was I going? This made my head spin. Clearly it could be inferred from her question that she liked me, but did she like me like me? Or did she just find me amusing? Or maybe she would only go if I weren't going, because she hated me and wanted me dead? How could I know?! I told my friends about the email and showed them her picture, crouched beside the chair that had dumped me on my ass several months earlier, and they all drew the same conclusions: "She's cute! She's totally into you. She likes you likes you!" So I told her that yes, I would go to the party, and I said I might even wear pants.

So anyway, Zeeba was back here in Wisconsin that week, working on some project or another along with a few other transients, and the mood was festive. Groups of people went out for dinners and drinks on the Tuesday of that week, and again on the Wednesday, and then again on the Thursday. Normally I'd have been reticent to join the festivities - especially during the black mood I was in for most of the year, a mood which had only finally broken a couple of weeks earlier - but Zeeba's email - plus a text message that came out of the blue the week before in which she wrote, "What I meant to say is, "Dinner next week?!" - made me feel all funny inside, and I needed to know what was what.

Come Friday, most of the other transients had gone away, but Zeeba was staying for the party on Saturday and she asked if I wouldn't mind having dinner with her. So we headed off for sushi (a perennial favorite!) and ate and drank and laughed a lot. I don't know when I had had a better time.

And then, after dinner, I drove her back to her hotel and... dropped her off.

And drove away.

As I got on the exit to the highway I noticed the time: 8:45 p.m. On a Friday night. My friend Kevin called at that moment and I said to him, "I should be shot in the face. I just had a great time with this hot chick and instead of trying to put the moves on her I just dropped her off at her room and it's not even fucking nine o'clock at night!" Then the call waiting beeped.

It was Zeeba.

I quickly hung up from Kevin and took her call. She pointed out that it was a Friday night - early - and she was alone in a strange town, and asked if I would mind hanging out with her some more. I sped off at the next exit, turned the car around, and headed right back to the hotel. When I got there I told her that I had just told my friend that I should be shot in the face and she replied, "And you should, too."

So for the next several hours, we enjoyed each others' company over some beers at a local watering hole, discussing life and family and friends and current events, laughing and joking and having a great time. And when it was time to go, I drove her back to her hotel and...

...said goodnight and drove home.

She sent me a text message a little bit later saying, "Thanks for hangin' with me tonight... I always have fun with you! It's bitter-sweet, I must say..."

And then, finally, after almost a year it finally sunk in - I think this girl might like me!

Like me like me!

And it only took me 8 months to figure it out. Iridium could have done it in two.

Now that is what I call dense.

The Last Five:
I heard it on the radio - 27 July 2008
Happiness is... - 26 July 2008
Do bears shit in the woods? - 21 July 2008
Politics schmoliticks - 14 July 2008
words and pictures - 14 July 2008

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