They are typically depicted as mindless, shambling, decaying corpses

I'm at my dads, right, where I haven't been for two years, right.

I have this feeling that I have lots and lots to write, but I'm currently incapable, it's too windy or hot or fuzzy this exact moment but I've got so much to say to everyone that is fairly important.
It is a frustrating feeling.

I get lots of traits from my father. I mean, don't get my wrong, I get lots of traits from my mom too. And my brother.
It's easier to identify shared traits when you share living space with the person.
My dad is a fine guy, I mean, this is the obligatory assurance that I am okay with my family that you have to get over with before you say anything remotely against one of them.

I worked at the lab, right, and I took the bus down, the 9:52 bus down to the mall every week, and every morning I'd walk through the mall and buy a small jamba juice which cost $4.01 and I would put a penny in my pocket every day so I could give exact change otherwise if you give them five dollars they'll give you 99 cents in change. One day I forgot the penny and got the 99 cents in change so I put an emergency handful of pennies in my bag.
So I'd drink my small jamba juice of various flavors, you know, I'd alternate between lots of flavors, they have lots, as I walked across campus to the chem building.
About, I'd been doing this since August, about around January I walked in one day and the chem teacher saw me and told his class "SEE? Told you he'd have the jamba juice! Griffin, you're a real creature of habit!"
And I grinned right, cause it's totally true, but I guess it really bugged me because I had never even thought about it, it was just my morning ritual. It stuck with me, because I've got it in my head that being a creature of habit isn't how you should be at age 20, you should be wild and crazy and fresh.
Capricious. It's one of my favorite words and I'd love to be able to have it apply to myself, but it's really not true at all.

The point is I get that from my father. He's been in this life of his for maybe seventeen years, and nothing big has really changed since then.
This is how all the indie films start, with a crotchety sad guy living in a bare apartment with his rare plant that is the sole receiver of his affection and then along comes some oddly fashionably dressed young girl, maybe she moves in next door, maybe she's poor, maybe they go on a cross country trip in an old run down car, the point is this is not how it is at all.
My dad is perfectly content and so am I, this is my familiar california house and life.

The point is that my dad is a really ritualized guy and there is a real negative light shed on the ritualization of a life because people think that variety, I mean, it's the spice of life.
We watch movies, we watch old comedies or old world war II movies or old mystery science theater 3000's. We make popcorn, and when we're done, we throw the unpopped kernels out the bowl off the deck. It's not the creepy kind of ritualization where, like, we eat a specific meal at 5:00 every monday.
That's the whole point.

It's the real small stuff that automatically becomes tradition, the brand of tortilla chips we buy, or the fact that no piece of furniture has been changed in this house for twenty years, or that we quote old movie jokes at each other while we do highly ritualized stuff like taking down the trash on thursdays, rolling the bins down the drive way with a flashlight lighting the way.

He hasn't changed either, that's the whole point. Down to the smallest trait, he still acts the same. Don't get me wrong, he buys a new computer or airplane model every now and then. When a new supermarket opens, he goes to it. The stickers on the back of his car change as we change schools. I don't want to call it a "tic" or a "tendency"...there is no word to describe a consistent persistent behavioral trait that doesn't carry a sinister negative vibe to it.
Maybe that's just how I see it.

He absorbs things into his ritual, is what I'm trying to say. It isn't that he buys a half-gallon of milk every Tuesday from the same store at 5:32 pm.
He just eats a bowl of cereal every day, whatever kind of wheat-chex-ies type.

It isn't like he gets the same exact flavor of jamba juice every day at the same time.
He just gets a jamba juice for breakfast cause he likes jamba juice.


Editor's Edit: And also, music!