Maintaining 4 column gpanel width using position: absolute;

Ok, here's a crazy one:

I added a 4 column Gpanel to my Genesis subtheme. I positioned the Gpanel above the sidebars.

Next, I added a jquery script to make the height of one of the four columns expand on mouseover using this code:

<script type="text/javascript">
$(document).ready(function(){
  $('#block-block-32 .block-content').hover(function(){ 
      $(this).animate({height: '150px'}, 'normal');
   }, function(){
       $(this).css("height", "58px")
   });
});
</script>

This works great, but the problem is that when the height expands it also pushes the sidebars down on the page. So to fix this, I tried to add "position: absolute" to the expanding column to make it expand over the sidebars without pushing them down. Worked fine except that by adding this code, I lose the ~25% width of that gpanel column.

Is there a way I can achieve this effect while maintaining the width of the gpanel column? I realize I can set a fixed width but I am trying to achieve a fluid layout to work with all resolutions.

I know this is a difficult one..thanks for any suggestions.