Joshua Zamrycki's Weblog

The only thing that has lifted us higher than the impending arrival of our first child is the overwhelming response to our “Good News” from all of our beautiful friends and family. We have been sent more comments and emails than we ever imagined! We’ve received congratulations, words of wisdom, a deluge of questions, and countless remarks on how disturbing the “JoshJan” looks. I’m in the process of writing back to each and every one of you lovely people, but it’s a busy week! Let me explain:

I spent most of Saturday with my volleyball team out in Torrefarrera, near Lleida (about an hour and a half away from Barcelona). We’ve only got three matches left in this regular season and one more win would guarantee us first place and a spot in a higher division for next year’s season. The strangest thing happened while we were warming up before the game: everything appeared to be happening in slow motion. The ball appeared to be moving slower than usual, allowing me to get into position to pass and spike the ball faster than ever while remaining completely calm and relaxed. I was even jumping higher than usual. It was an incredibly cosmic experience! I can’t explain it. In any case, I played one of my best games of the year and we went on to easily beat the other team 3-0. Hello first place.

After the game, we raced back to Barcelona so some of the guys could attend a Carnival party and I could make it to Razzmatazz for the Kaiser Chief’s concert. I met up with Jan, AmJan, Juls, Anna Spanna, and Dave right before the second opening band, We Are Scientists, began (who totally rocked, by the way). Then the Kaiser Chiefs came out. It was a hard rocking, pogo jumping, mild moshing, seizure inducing, crowd surfing adventure! They only have the one album at the moment so their part of the concert wasn’t technically all that long, but it was a show unto itself. Highlights of the gig must have been Oh My God, I Predict A Riot, and when the lead singer jumped off of the stage, climbed up the rafters to the balcony where he ran around the room through the audience, and then crowd surfed back to the stage, singing all the while. Jan even got to touch him! These boys know how to party.

Today wasn’t quite as exciting as Saturday, but it was event-filled all the same. Jan and I saw Brokeback Mountain (the fourth of five Oscar nominated films we have to see), cleaned the flat, cooked a couscous feast, and spent a couple hours researching and working on the rewrites for the next pay I am slated to direct here in Barcelona – Beyond Therapy by Christopher Durang. I’ll tell you more about the play very soon.

Looking towards the future, I already have my day planner filled with interesting jobs for the upcoming week. I will be acting on stage, working a trade fair, voicing two films and a cartoon, and playing trumpet for loose change in front of the Sagrada Familia. Details to come…

Positive Result: The presence of color bands in both
the Circular Test and Square Control Windows
means that you are likely to be pregnant.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are officially awaiting the Teletubby invasion forces. That’s right, I’m buying sardine and pickle futures while Jan has got a three-month pass for the morning porcelain express. Yup, my wife is knocked up!

We’ve been dying to tell people for the longest time. You see, we found out way back in January when we got back from our New Year’s ski trip and Jan was tossing her cookies all over the place, but didn’t want to tell anyone until we went for the first sonogram and everything turned out more or less as it should. And this has now come to pass. Check it out:

Pretty cool huh? That’s mine. I did that.

As you can see in the scan, the critter’s only got one head and no visible horns (yet) so we now feel comfortable making this wonderful news public. We even got to listen to the heartbeat. It sounded like a scared little rabbit under water. Very exciting stuff. The little bruiser even put on a little boxing display for us while we were watching. Watch out, we’ve got ourselves a little prize fighter!

Some have commented that the ultrasound is not very clear and that they have trouble discerning the baby’s outline. For these people, I have tried to sharpen and clarify the image by applying the famous “John & Yoko” Photoshop filter to the sonogram of our unborn child:

See it now? It’s amazing what one can do with technology nowadays.

So here’s the skinny: Jan is now in her 13th week of pregnancy. The “morning” sickness is slowly starting to dissipate. We still don’t know what the sex is but can’t wait to find out (so we can start choosing a name and buy the appropriate color paint for the new bedroom). Jan has a feeling that it’s a boy. I like to refer to it as “Murray” – Jan doesn’t like this. The estimated due date is now set at September 1, 2006 – so we’re talking about a Virgo here. We’re all happy and healthy and really looking forward to this.

Finally, again thanks to the wonders of modern technology, we have come across a new imaging technique that should put many a worried mind at ease. All you have to do is have both expecting parents spit into the funnel-shaped receptacle of this amazing machine and, after a complicated DNA analysis, an image is displayed of what their child will look like in 30 years time. Jan and I figured, “What the heck?” and hocked a loogy into this contraption and here’s what came out:

A face only a mother could love.

Yes, we’re looking for a new apartment. A new place to hang our hats. If we wore hats. Well, I do. But only when I don’t want to brush my hair. Usually baseball caps. Jan doesn’t really wear hats. OK, sometimes. But hardly ever.

The problem is we don’t want to leave where we are. We love the neighborhood, the gigantic terrace, the view, and the intimacy. Well, maybe not the intimacy. I guess the intimacy is why we’re looking for a new place to live. We need more space!

Our current flat – for those of you who have never come to visit (shame on you) – is a paltry 35 m². There’s only one bedroom and we have a combined living room, dining room, and office. And then there’s the bathroom. Oy gavalt, the bathroom! Our bathroom is so small that the toilet had to be installed diagonally so the person sitting on it wouldn’t bash their knees against the opposite wall. Did I mention that we’re on the sixth floor and there’s no elevator? We gotta move.

And so we started looking. Have you looked recently? Have you seen the prices of flats here in Barcelona? It’s obscene! And not just any old obscene. I’m talking “goatse” obscene here. We’ve had a pretty sweet deal for the past three years so we’ve actually managed to save a little something for a rainy day. That should come in handy. More than handy, to pay for the three bedrooms, elevator, and sunny front room that we want, that nest egg will be absolutely necessary.

In the past two weeks, I’ve already gone to visit about 14 different apartments. They all sounded good on paper, but once we got there, it was either in a dodgy part of town, had no windows, no joi de vivre, or was obviously designed during that outrageous and psychedelic period known as the swinging sixties. And so we said to ourselves, “Selves, we’re not in any rush to move so there’s no need to settle for something that we’re not 100% convinced of. We’ve got plenty of time.” Until today.

Today we went to visit a flat over on the other side of Gracia (our favorite neighborhood of Barcelona). It was spacious, clean, had parquet floors, central heating, three bedrooms, a decent size balcony, was within our price range, and it had an elevator. So right after relegating ourselves to another two months of tranquil apartment hunting, along comes this contender on which we probably have to decide within the next couple days! The place isn’t perfect: one of the bedrooms is kinda small, the kitchen could use some work, Jan may not have any direct sunlight to tan herself with, and the elementary school across the street may prove to be a bit noisy when attempting to take a mid-day siesta. After all of the searching we’ve done over the past couple of weeks, we haven’t seen anything this good for this price. But you never know what will pop up tomorrow! We’ve gotta think this through pretty fast because there are always two or three real estate vultures hovering just above you looking for property carrion. It’s exciting and scary all at once.

I met Nancy in 1996 while we were both eager young students at SUNY Binghamton. As luck would have it, we were both cast in the University’s main stage production of Much Ado About Nothing. Early in the rehearsal process, Nancy had one of her friends approach me and ask if I was gay. She apparently thought I was cute and wanted to make sure I was fair game. I didn’t think Nancy was cute – I thought she was adorable!

For those of you who never had the honor of meeting Nancy, she had shiny red hair, an enormous smile that forced her eyes shut, and an even bigger heart. She was the sweetest thing on God’s green Earth. When placed side by side, both in a standing position, Nancy’s red head would normally occupy the space around my chest. You see, Nancy was never very tall. But I never understood how such a small container could hold so much life!

Nancy was a dreamer. She was an actor, a comedian, and poet. She was a wise-cracking, energetic, level-headed, shy, mask-making, world traveling adventurer. Nancy was a friend and an inspiration.

Lindsey, Jovan, Dan, me, and Nancy – 1997 Binghamton

Nancy was an amazing source of positive energy and had so much to give. Whether we were bumming around on a Sunday afternoon listening to Beck (a personal favorite of hers and, quite frankly, an unhealthy obsession) or off on an arctic, cramped, and rainy camping trip to the forestial wastelands of upstate New York, spending time with Nancy simply made me happy.

Nancy lived in Manhattan. And London. And Binghamton, Scotland, Queens, San Francisco, Bali, and yes folks, even New Jersey. I learned so much from Nancy. She guided me as I prepared a play to bring to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival – she had already been there, already done that. She gave me advice as to which play to direct next here in Barcelona – she was working as a professional actress in New York and knew her stuff! The one time Jan met Nancy – back in 2000, around the time Jan and I first went to Italy – Nancy told us all about Peggy Guggenheim, her canal-front house and massive art collection in Venice, and all of Peggy’s sordid love affairs. Jan was inspired by Nancy’s words and passion and was subsequently obsessed with Peggy Guggenheim’s life. Nancy changed people’s lives. She definitely changed mine.

Kathleen, Jeanne, Nancy, Thea – 2000 New York

Nancy used to tell me that I had a knack for always calling her just when she needed to hear a friend’s voice most. The last time I called her, she was spending quality time with her father and couldn’t speak. Two weeks later, on the day after Christmas, Nancy passed away in her sleep.

This entry has taken me more than a month to write. Not because I found it so difficult to word things perfectly, but because I found it so difficult to approach. I would sit down and tell myself, “I’m going to just write from the heart and see what comes out.” But nothing would come out. I think that if I actually wrote anything in the past tense about Nancy, I would be accepting what had happened and I would lose her. In the meantime, I haven’t written anything else out of respect for Nancy. How could she be placed on the back burner? I have now had enough of a chance to think about Nancy, remember her, celebrate her life, and talk to other friends about her, that I am ready to move on. I loved Nancy with all my heart and always will. My life will be emptier without her.

If you would like to read another online tribute to Nancy with other memories, facts, and emotions, her friend Low Like War [broken link] has written a beautiful remembrance. Thank you.