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February 18, 2000 |
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[Sleep…]
My pager is going off. What time is it? Damn! It is almost
noon! Yesterday, I made plans to have lunch with Trudy today, and I'm late. Story of my
life I'm sure that the page is from Trudy about lunch. I got home
after 5am this morning and ended up going to sleep past 8am. I'm tired. I
jumped out of bed and brushed my teeth. I got another page, while brushing
my teeth. I checked both messages. Trudy left me a message saying that
she and Jim are going to Casa Vallarta,
and I should join them if/when I got the chance. I got dressed in a hurry,
putting on the dress shirt that I had put aside a few days ago. Although I
didn't get a chance to brush all the lint off it.
Did I mention that I'm not a morning person?
I did catch up with them. They had not ordered yet, so it would seem that
I was not as late as I originally thought I was. We each talked about
things… like friends will. Rick was
also in the same restaurant, as a matter of fact he said hello when I
walked into the restaurant. He was having lunch with his group so he
snubbed us. I spoke briefly about my dinner plans with Pam, not much though other than mentioning that I had plans for
the evening, which explains the shirt, though I complained about the lint.
It was great having lunch with Trudy and Jim; they're dear friends.
On the drive back to work, I was just ahead of Trudy. It is a short drive
with a few stoplights. We are stopped at one of the lights. I fetch the
dragon hand puppet that I keep in the car. It's green; I couldn't find a
blue one. [Sigh] I put it on and started to play with it…
gesturing wildly with it to the rhythm of the music over my shoulder.
Since I drive a Del Sol the puppet is
fairly easy to see. Trudy smiles and waves back. I'm such a goofball.
I still hadn't heard back from Pam so I called her at work. She wasn't in. I left a message and hoped that she would get back to me. She did eventually, but I wasn't in my office. So we were playing phone tag. I did eventually get to talk to her on the phone. We decided that I would be picking her up at about 7:30pm.
Sometime during the afternoon I went to review someone's changes to a component (work stuff). On the way back to my office, I ran into Trudy in the hallway. She mentioned that I looked nice with that shirt on, lint and all. I smiled and thanked her; it was nice to hear.
I went home for a while in the afternoon so I could freshen up. I was so tired that I ended up taking a little nap. After I woke, I took a shower and got dressed again, and this time I did brush the lint off the shirt. I went back to work.
I continued working for a while. It was about 6pm when someone cornered me to look at a particular problem. Hey, it's my job. So I'm sitting here looking at this bug, which actually seems like a problem with another part of the architecture, and someone else who is more familiar with it should probably be the one who takes a look at it. While we were discussing this problem someone else corners me to look at another problem. After some investigation we found again that someone else would be more qualified to take a look, although I continued to dig to see if we could narrow things down even more. It was getting fairly late… about 6:30pm and I really needed to get going.
I let them know that I had dinner plans and simply had to go.
Now, I know that Pam reads my journal. [Hi!] So I'm going to be very careful about what I say here. You understand I'm sure. Yes… I tell other women I see that I keep an online journal, and they're welcome to read it, but none of the others seem interested.
The plan was to get dinner at a Shamiana, which is incidentally my favorite Indian restaurant. I work and live on the Eastside (east of Lake Washington); Shamiana is on the Eastside. She lives in Seattle (in Queen Anne Hill). The plan was that I would pick her up and we would go to dinner, which meant that I would have to drive across the 520 bridge … twice. Now did I mention that this was on a Friday night? …in the third worst traffic in the country?
Traffic crawled. What is normally about a twenty minute drive took me close to an hour. I'll have to admit that I was getting a bit frustrated. There was a stretch where the fastest we were moving was about 15-20 mph. As I get off the highway, I call her from a stoplight to let her know I'm fairly close. She exclaims that she's not ready yet. So I told her that I could simply wait downstairs while she finished up.
Once I got downstairs to her place I called her and waited until she finished up. I was parked in a reserved spot, so I hesitated to leave my car. She came out in a few minutes and we were off to dinner.
We decided to go the back way. It seems like everytime we get together it is some sort of an escapade. We figured that it would be the fastest way to get back to the highway. Well, tonight it wasn't. We wandered into what has probably part of the industrial district in Seattle. We were pretty hopelessly lost. At one point we pulled over into the parking lot of a café, and I take a look in a map on my palm-size PC. I get a rough idea where we are and which general direction we should head. We eventually find our way back to the highway and proceed to dinner. The remainder of the trip was uneventul.
Dinner was wonderful as it always is at Shamiana. We talked about work and what we were each up to and a number of other things. Naturally, there was a part of me that was really curious about her and what she was thinking about me. There's also a part of me that tells himself that I'd like to deal with relationships as honestly as I could. So at some point during dinner I asked her, "So is there any interest on your part?"
Note: There's a phrase that you'll often hear among programmers… "Never check for an error condition you're not prepared to handle." Tonight, I found out that his also applies to life.I normally think pretty quickly on my feet. I was prepared for a number of responses… "Well, maybe" "It has crossed my mind" "Not really" or something along those lines. I was prepared to retreat to a corner after dinner so that I could lick my wounds.
Her response? "Yes."
Uhmm… I was flabbergasted. I was at a complete loss for words. I simply could not process that response quickly enough. I reflected back upon everything we have done and all the things we've said, and how it all now looks so much differently.
We briefly talked about my hands. [See the enclosed
picture…] She says that I have beautiful hands, and apparently
her mom also noticed when we met.
I cannot make this up! You know something… I don't think
about it all that much, but a number of people have mentioned this so now I
really have to think about it. Terrific. Now, I'm self-concious
about my hands. Is this something that women routinely look at? Should I
do more things to get them noticed? What can I do? I can't hide my hands!
I feel so cheap!
We finished dinner and had one slice of the coconut ice cream pie… with two forks. [Hmmm… coconut should be it's own food group] I managed to get some ice cream on my shirt. [Groan!] We left the restaurant shortly after, we dropped by my office so I could pick up the origami dragon I made for her some months ago.
What did we do afterwards? I could say a number of things. I will say that she smelled absolutely wonderful.
I could say …that we robbed a bank …or that we danced the night away …or that we exchanged more kisses than I could possibly count …or that we spent the night walking around the streets of Seattle …or that we counted the ships on Elliot Bay while I held her closely and softly covered her neck with kisses …or that we went bowling …or that we talked for hours …or that we got hopelessly lost again and were mugged …or that we both fell asleep in each other's arms…
Like I said, I could say many things, but I'm nothing if not vague. Besides, there are two of us here, and I have to respect her privacy.
Not enough? You need some solid, cold, hard details? Okay, you get one more. She's ticklish, which I happen to find very sexy.
More importantly how do I feel? The problem here is that I'm sure that this is one of those times where the words will fail me. I feel elated. I feel wonderful. I feel safe. I didn't want those moments to end, though I was fighting time. There are those moments in life which you want to capture in a picture. You want these pictures to represent the life which you've led. You want to frame them and hold on to them forever. I won't hesitate for a moment to list this as one of them. I'm floating; I can only hope it lasts.
I want to see her again and as soon as I can. The rest of you will just have to wonder.
February 18, 2000