The Chronicles Of Jessica

I'll tell you what's a-happening.

The thing is, not much. Although a whole lot of stuff seems to be happening to other people. Check this out:

Friends Having Babies:

Anne and Johnny
Margie and Jim
Abby and Ed

Friends Getting Married:
Anish and Michelle
Aaron and Emily
Justin and Allyson
Jake and Virginia

Friends Moving to Phoenix
David Loar and Kristen Barner

Friends Who Had A Tree Fall On Their Car During Recent Tornado:
Julie Smith

Friends Getting Out of Prison
Eric Schoen (Take it one day at a time, buddy. One day at a time.)

In the book "Heartburn" by Nora Ephron, she writes about her marriage to the philanderous Woodward (or Bernstein, I get them mixed up) and she mentions how she could never figure out how to work it so that when you're married things keep happening to you. I kind of know what she means. When I was single a LOT of stuff used to happen on me - of course, most of it wasn't very good, and it usually involved getting stuck with the check; still, I had anecdote fodder for days! Now my anecdotes involve stuff like not having a sink in our bathroom for a month because of a leaky pipe and having to brush my teeth in the tub. Fascinating! Tell us more! Or showing up to the gym for a six a.m. workout and finding that whoever was supposed to open the gym must have overslept.

(That was a nasty hang, let me tell you. There's no angrier group of people than folks who've hauled their cookies out of bed in the dark to try and accomplish something as horrible as exerciseonly to find that they can't get into the place where the exercise occurs. Vicious, vicious crowd. I took the opportunity to go back home to make Paul a 'Jess McMuffin' and watch a Seinfeld rerun before work, which, while not cardiovascular, had its own rewards.)

I've had a few auditions and a couple of callbacks, lest you think I am just withering on the vine. Also I helped edit Paul's thesis proposal, "George W. Bush - Secret Genius or Total Incompetent Failure and Poopyhead?" I'm caught up on every episode of Biggest Loser (go, Kelly, go!) Annnnnd - I finally found the perfect pair of underwear! It doesn't ride up, it doesn't wedgie, it covers everything it's supposed to! I bought eight pairs in different colors. I think it's going to improve my outlook considerably. Send congratulatory emails care of this website.

Ciao for now...

I haven't had a diet coke in 2 days, 6 hours and 3 minutes. I'm getting that aspartame monkey off my back, people! So far it's been pretty easy but this could just be the honeymoon phase.

I'm sure this seems like a very drastic step for me to be taking, but I've been doing some research about the chemicals contained in Diet Coke and it's not encouraging. Check this out:

Aspartame/Nutrasweet (aspartylphenylalanine-methyl-ester) breaks down to its poison constituents at 86 degrees (Aspartic Acid 40%, Phenylalanine 50%, and Methanol 10%). Aspartame/Nutrasweet's breakdown products attack the bodies tissues and create Formaldehyde which builds up in the tissues forever.

Your stomach is 98.6 degrees! WTF? Formaldehyde? That. Cannot. Be good. There's just no way it's advantageous to be ingesting this stuff. Except that I love it. I love the crack of the can when you open it, I love its fizzy brown just-one-calorie deliciousness. But I'm going to be strong. I want to have a baby someday and when I do I'd prefer that it incubate in a non-formaldehy-drated uterus. I'm trying to stick to this, so I'm accepting suggestions of other stuff to drink. Here are a few choices I've ruled out thus far:

Yoo Hoo. The taste is okay, I guess, but the name is really too stupid to make any kind of serious commitment to this beverage.

Southern Comfort.This had its chance in college and let me down miserably. VERY miserably.

Grapefruit Juice. Makes my face turn inside out.

Tea. Meh. What am I, English? I mean I know I was BORN in England but I just can't get into tea. What are you supposed to do with the bag afterward? That's what I've always wondered. Saucers have kind of gone by the wayside in these troubled modern times. Are you supposed to fold it up in a napkin, put it on the table, stick it in your purse - what!? And I never know when to have it, anyway. I know there's a proscribed English 'tea-time' but I could never figure out how to account for the time difference.

Iced Tea. Doesn't taste like anything. Makes me have to pee.

Water. Get serious.

In a recent budget meeting the Fidalgos decided to think seriously about giving up cable television, which would mean I would officially have no vices left. Except red meat. And cheese. And wine and beer.

Sigh. It's a slippery place, the wagon. Why else would it be so easy to fall off?

(Oh - and magazines. But they don't hurt anything! Except the environment. Forget this entire post.)

I had to wait in line at the post office for 45 minutes today, just to mail our tax returns. Apparently everyone else in America also waits until the absolute last minute to give Uncle Sam his booty. There was one guy handling a line of about twenty people. In Washington, DC. On April 15th. Gah.

Some jobs - it's almost unbelievable there's anyone willing to do them. There's a new baseball stadium that just went up around the corner from us, so the city is being super ultra mega jerks about making sure that no one is parked in the neighborhood that isn't supposed to be. On the one hand I guess I'm supposed to be grateful that they're getting rid of the interlopers so that I (whose car is in full compliance) will still have a place to park. On the other hand, I can't help but feel that people whose job it is to wander around the city and slap big orange stickers on people's cars and have them towed and charge them lots of money and ruin their nice outing to a baseball game - I can't help but feel that those people sort of suck and should get a different job.

In college the university would offer these part-time jobs to students writing parking tickets on campus. You never really knew who had these jobs because this was considered the lowest of the low, writing needlessly expensive tickets to other poor college students. We called them The Turncoats. I only found out years after the fact that my friend Dave Delauter had one of these jobs for a while freshman year; such was his deep personal shame that he was afraid to reveal himself for fear of hideous social retribution. It's probably not even a good idea to put that out on the internet, it could still have repercussions to this day. (Dave - if by some twist of Google fate your wife reads this and leaves you: My bad.)

The more I think about it, the more I realize that there are entire professions that I can't imagine people being willing to enter into. Proctologist. (That's too easy, I know.) Bikini waxer - worse yet, back waxer. (Shudder.) Reality television show producer. Prison conjugal visit supervisor. Republican political strategist. IRS agent. I wonder how these people get through the day. How hard up must they be for money that they are willing to suffer the slings and arrows of these odious careers?

Personally, I like to feel that I'm making a contribution to society, that what I do lifts people up, that....

Shit. I forgot for a second that I'm an actor. We tend to be employed so infrequently, that's a real occupational hazard.

Yet I suppose the inherent lesson is that no matter how demoralizing the artists' struggle, we can rest comfortably in the knowledge that at the end of the day, there's only the very slightest chance that we'd be called upon to put a finger or fist into another person's nether regions, or betray the planet or our fellow man. Or find ourselves being chased furiously down the street by an angry tourist screaming, "That's my car!!! I was just about to move it, you bastards!!!!"

And that's no small comfort, my friends.

Tomorrow I'm going in for my lasik surgery. Paul is driving me there and back, but he does not wish to take advantage of the special viewing room they have for friends and family. Surgeries and lasers - this is not his kind of thing. He doesn't even like the Discovery channel. So if anyone wants to watch the proceedings, speak up now! There's a seat at the table!

This is from my friend Jeff at work. Hopefully my surgery will be unremarkable and in no way hilarious.

They're lucky I didn't use duct tape and crazy glue.

Dear Car Owner and (Presumably) Neighbor:

We don’t know one another but I have an enormous favor to ask of you. Would you please, please, PLEASE for the love of God do something about your car alarm. It goes off ALL. THE. TIME. It goes off for no reason whatsosever. It goes off and it goes off and it is so loud, and so annoying, that it makes me want to commit an indecent act. Do you remember a few weeks ago when you came out to your car one morning and it had shaving cream and coffee that had been thrown all over it sometime during the night? That was the lady who lives across the street. Your car alarm went off all night long, and she kept coming out and screaming, and finally sometime around 3 am, she snapped. Yes, it was ugly, but I understood the sentiment. I had already been woken up about 6 times myself by then.

I can’t really tell from up here in my apartment what kind of car you have, but it’s obviously not any kind of expensive luxury vehicle. What makes you so paranoid that someone’s going to try to steal it? There are all kinds of really nice cars parked around; I’ve seen Lexus’s, Mercedes, BMW’s. I don’t mean to be insulting but I really don’t think you have anything to be worried about. I actually think you risk more damage being done to your car by someone being driven around the bend by your alarm than the risk of theft. Also it’s obvious that you can’t hear the alarm from wherever you are anyway – I’ve never seen you rushing out to confront the would-be thief when it goes off.

My advice to you is to upgrade to a comprehensive insurance policy, get that alarm taken out of your car and just hope for the best. The fact that your tires haven’t been slashed is a testament to the goodness of human nature! Trust in that, and get rid of your car alarm. I’m begging you. The neighborhood is begging you. My husband, who averages 5 hours of sleep a night, is begging you.

Sincerely,

Unofficial Representative of Capitol Hill Citizens Against Noise Pollution