Oh, my goodness. It’s been a while. Sorry about that. It’s because you need to:

Watch Samantha Who? starring Christina Applegate, Jean Smart, Melissa McCarthy and Jennifer Esposito, starting October 15th, Monday nights on ABC. Right between Dancing With the Stars and The Bachelor. A night so girly, you just might ovulate!

There are a few things I miss about working on the WB lot. One of them is my parking space, right in front of the door. But this year, while my parking space is far away in a garage, it has my name on it! My name, spelled correctly, thank you, right there where I park. So official! I totally work here!

At the last sitcom, my office was at the very end of a long hallway, so far away from the rest of the action that there was one occasion where the entire staff left for a table read and forgot to get me. Anyway, this year my office is right in front. Right at the front door, as a matter of fact, with two big windows, one of which slides open. I was informed this is because my office was the original pay window on the lot, where everybody would stand in line on Fridays to get their paychecks.

Having a sliding window in a building full of funny people is a good time at first. I’ve taken a lot of drive-thru orders, using the back of my bendy lamp as a crappy microphone. People like to press themselves up against the window, pretend I’m an art installation, or a zoo animal, or they shout at me instead of walking two extra steps to be inside my office. I can see trees, and the room is usually sunny. It helped the other day when one of the writers came into my office during lunch and shouted, “Jesus Christ, it reeks in here!”

But yesterday, I learned the hazards of my sliding window.

I was working diligently at my desk (Diligently, Don! Working so hard. Good little worker bee. Making with the funny-funny. All for you.), cranking out revisions on a script (which shoots next week and I’m trying not to freak out about it), when a woman approached my sliding window. Now, you kind of have to almost enter our building to do this, so I figured she had stopped by for an audition. She was clearly an actress, with her hair done and her clothes just so. She tapped on my window and motioned for me to slide it open. How did she know it opens? Why didn’t she just walk the two steps to enter my office? Do I look that much like an information window?

…So I slid the window open.

“Can I borrow a pen?”

I find a pen for her, and hand it through the window. I go back to my laptop, to diligently work. Work hard for the money, so hard for the money.

“Thanks,” she says. She’s on her cell phone, listening to a message, but still talking to me. She points at the little shelf outside my window, where I had put all of the packs of cigarettes and lighters for the smokers. “You’ve got quite the set-up,” she says. “All different kinds.”

“Oh, yeah. Heh.” Type, type, type. Typey-typey.

“Do you mind if I have one?”

I look up from my laptop. Turn to her. “No, go right ahead.”

She lights up. “I’m sorry. You’re trying to work.”

“Well, it’s okay.”

She exhales smoke, into my office. “So, what is this place?”

I tell her that this is for Samantha Who?

“Oh!” She says. “I came in here to read a couple of weeks ago.” Then she eyes me suspiciously and says, “But there wasn’t someone sitting here when I came in. Not in this office.”

I tell her that I’m a writer, so I’m usually in the writer’s room. She pulls back her shoulders and says, “Oh! Oh, wow. Well, the writing on this show is really great.”

I thank her, and tell her that there’s some really talented people on the staff.

“Yeah,” she says. “So, can I ask you about a part?”

Yikes. “Yeah.”

“I’m just wondering who ended up getting the part of the best friend.”

“Oh,” I say. “Jennifer Esposito.”

“I don’t know who she is.”

“She was on Spin City? She was in Crash?”

She flips her hand at the wrist. “Oh. Oh, yeah. Well, then I don’t feel so bad anymore.”

“Yeah, it’s not her first rodeo, as my friend’s mom would say.”

I try to go back to my script. And then this:

“Sorry. I know you’re trying to work, but. I can’t get my agent on the phone and… I don’t know where I’m going next so… could you Mapquest something for me?”

“Uh, yeah. Sure.”

She hands me her resume through the window and I look up the address of this lot and Mapquest her next destination. I tell her that I’m not connected to a printer. She says that’s fine; I can just tell her and she’ll write it down… with my pen. She’s going to Agoura Hills. I tell her that Agoura Hills is pretty far away.

“How far?”

“Well, you get on the 101 for twenty miles.”

“North or South?”

“North.”

She sighs. “Well, what’s traffic going to be like? Is this going to take me a long time?”

“Um, Mapquest says it’s twenty minutes without traffic, up to fifty-five with.”

“And what time is it now?”

At the tone, the time is Time For Me to Put Down My Blinds.

“Two-thirty.”

“Well, should I just go tomorrow then? Getting home’s going to be a nightmare.”

“Yeah, I guess if you could go tomorrow, in the morning, you might have– you know, it’s really up to you.”

“I’ll go tomorrow. Here’s your pen.”

“Thanks.”

“Good luck with your script.”

The information desk is currently closed. If you are looking for help, please wait until after I’m done shooting this script. Thank you.