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The Ritual

February 7, 2011 By Zel-kun 5 Comments

My life as an adult is defined by routines.  Some routines are burdensome and monotonous, such as attempting to sleep through the first two songs after the radio alarm goes off in the morning, or regularly leaving the lunch on the dining room table.  Other routines are annoying, like following my wife’s footsteps and shutting off all the lights of the rooms she’s been in.  My father used to ask me if I thought he was made of money, and now I ask the same thing of her every day.  You know that curse parents place on you when you’re a kid?  The “I hope when you grow up you have kids just like you” curse?  Yeah, it comes true.  And if you try to avoid it by not having any, the curse is happy to substitute your wife in place of kids.

Now she spends late nights with her friends in the basement laughing, drinking Mountain Dew, and playing the D and D.  It’s the devil’s game, I tells ya.

Some routines just confuse me.  Every evening I’ll walk over to the washroom, and turn on an imaginary light just outside the door.  I don’t know why I think there’s a light switch there.  There has never been a light switch there, nor have I ever lived in a house with a light switch outside the bathroom.  But every day, like clockwork, I’ll try to flip that imaginary switch.  I guess it’s only a matter of time before I start trying to walk through imaginary doors and lifting imaginary boxes.  After that I might as well move to Paris and become a mime.

There is one routine, however, that gives me comfort and a bit of pride every time I do it.  Recently I’ve taken to calling it the Ritual.  Every night, after my wife heads upstairs to bed, I take a moment to make sure everything is in order.  I turn off the television, make sure the X-box (we usually stream Netflix) is off, and walk into the kitchen.  I make sure the stove and oven have been properly turned off, and walk over to the fridge.  I open it and peer inside a moment, and most days I just shrug and close it.  I always find myself examining the inside of refrigerators, even when I’m at other people’s houses.  I don’t have to be hungry or thirsty, but if I don’t catch myself in time, there I am peering inside of whatever refrigerator happens to be nearby.  I’m guessing it has something to do with the imaginary light switch.

Afterwards, I go to the back door and test the lock.  Sometimes it’s locked, sometimes not.  I walk back to the living room and pause at the base of the stairs by the front door.  I check to make sure the front door is locked, and then take everything in a moment.  There’s a sort of pride in taking the time to make sure everything is just right in the home before bed.  It’s not just that, it’s knowing that I’ve worked hard enough to HAVE a house to make sure is in order, when it wasn’t too many years ago I was working at Wal-Mart trying not to punch my manager in the face.

I guess that’s what the ritual is all about, just taking a moment to appreciate where you are, where you came from, and how you got there.

Adulthood, huh?

Go figure.

Zel-kun out.

Filed Under: Humor, Misc Tagged With: , , , , ,

The Icy Path

January 10, 2011 By Zel-kun 7 Comments

Moving into a house has presented quite a few new challenges, I am regularly reminded of all the things I took for granted living in an apartment.  At first they were things I expected.  I got used to performing minor household repairs, and even learned how to use a drain snake, which was somehow much harder than it looked.  I learned how to make sure the gas is turned off on the stove, to avoid having the monoxide detector going off and having to call the police.  The police will then turn the gas off for you and make you sign a paper acknowledging they turned off your gas because you’re an idiot.

Not that I speak from personal experience on that one.

The most recent lesson I’m learning is how to control ice.  Towards the end of last winter, the snow began to melt during the day, making the pleasant dripping sound that lets us all know Spring is just around the corner.  Unfortunately, in the evening the temperature dropped and turned my porch into a deathtrap.  I had a friend coming over for dinner, and stepped out on the porch to meet him.  I say stepped, but really it was more of an impressive Three Stooges pratfall that left me half in my living room and half on the front porch.  I’m sure everyone would have been laughing if they weren’t so horrified.  My wife and my friend both said it looked like I should have shattered my pelvis or something.  I’m happy to report that other than being stunned for a moment, I was miraculously uninjured.

I stood up carefully and examined the porch, which was incredibly shiny and smooth.  It was as though I was cultivating genetically-modified ice for arctic warfare on my stoop.  I hugged the railing and nearly slipped again making my way to the relatively dry sidewalk.  I went to my garage and looked at the arsenal I had to work with.  I had no salt, because that would have been an intelligent thing for a Chicagoan to have in Winter.  The plastic and cracked snow shovel wasn’t going to be doing me any good.  I then looked at the garden tools left by the previous owners.  I grabbed a hoe thinking that I could swing it over my head and crack the ice, then spotted another tool behind it.  It was like a hoe, but instead of the blade being curved to point towards the ground, it stuck straight out of the handle, seemingly perfect for stricking downward to shatter the ice field in front of my door.

I nodded and went to work, and found that this tool worked perfectly, I was able to both break and scrape ice off the porch, cultivating the artificial tundra into a somewhat safe area.  I was talking to another friend of mine later that week, and told him the story.

“It’s a good thing they left you an ice breaker!” he said.

“Yes, but I wonder what the tool is,” I replied, thinking it was actually some sort of garden tool.

“It’s called an ice breaker, it’s designed to break ice.”

“Well, I guess that’s why it was so good at it!”

So now I keep a bag of salt and my trusty ice breaker by my door all winter long.  As much as I love the Three Stooges, I don’t really care to do impromptu impersonations of them.

Zel-kun out.

Filed Under: Humor

Becoming my father

October 14, 2010 By Zel-kun 5 Comments

When I was a kid, I thought adulthood would be a rite of passage.  I would wake up one morning, there would be a ceremony, and I could declare to my audience that I have officially become an adult.  As I continued to grow, I realized that adulthood doesn’t happen immediately, or even noticeably.  No, for me it happens in tiny moments where I stop and think, “Wow… I look just like an adult.”

The first such moment happened when I was twenty-three.  I had moved back to Illinois, and was living in my mother’s basement at the time (not exactly adultish, I’ll admit).  A few months prior, I was laid off from a small company I worked at.  I signed up with a contracting firm, and was travelling all over Chicagoland doing odd IT jobs.  While the work wasn’t always steady, money was good when the work was available.  One day, I had a job upgrading a number of PC’s.  It was at a larger company, and I was told they had a stricter dress code evem for their technicians.  I walked in with my briefcase, in a nice coat, slacks, and button-up shirt.  I passed a full-length mirror in the hall and stopped.  I looked at myself and the kid inside me shouted, “What have you become?”

The second time is was when I was purchasing my house.  For two months, I ceaselessly talked to lawyers, realtors, lenders, and insurance brokers.  The maelstrom of paperwork culminated in the closing, when I had to sign what seemed like hundreds of papers.  As I sat there in that office, listening to lawyers on boths sides spout off legalese, I realized that I have become a certified adult.

The third and most recent time was just the other day.  I came home from work and sat down on the couch, I reached for the remote, then my wife informed me the bathtub was clogged and even after pulling hair out of the drain it was still stopped up.  I groaned and went upstairs to investigate.  Sure enough, there was a bathtub full of water and a small pile of greasy hair nearby.  While this had happened before, my father was kind enough to unclog it for me.  He even gave me a drain snake which I have thrice used very unsuccessfully.  That thing was smarter than me.

I didn’t have a whole lot of hope for try number four, but I got the drill out, attached the snake, and hoped for the best.  I was never able to get the snake past the first bend in the pipe, but something was different that day.  I saw what my dad did in my mind clear as day, and I followed the technique to the letter.  I spun the snake and fed it down, wondering if I was doing it wrong because it seemed so easy.  After I fed the snake a few feet down I saw a ripple in the water.  I stopped the drill and tugged the snake back out of the drain, freeing a monstrosity of hair and allowing the water to rapidly drain.

I stood there with my disgusting trophy for several moments, the frustration and irritation I felt at having to spend my evening fixing something completely draining away.  It may seem odd that something so simple could fill me with pride, but I think I can explain why.  In that moment, not only have I accomplished one more milestone in adulthood (fixing a household problem successfully), but I have also taken a step to becoming more like the man I admire most, my father.

Filed Under: Misc

Technology – The unifier

September 10, 2010 By Zel-kun 8 Comments

As a man who works in the field of Information Technology, it should come as no surprise that I’m something of a tech head.  I love technology and everything it does, from the alarm clock that wakes me up in the morning, to the television I watch just before bed.  Yet, as I talk to people, I find that technology gets a really bad rap.  Some say it works to divide, cutting us off from our fellow human beings of flesh and blood.  Personally, I don’t find this to be the case at all.  In my experience, it has worked to bring me closer to my friends and family, and has even changed my life for the better.

I was a social outcast for my elementary school career, it wasn’t until high school that I actually acquired a real friend.  In high school I found my place among fellow nerds, and we spent time in our parents’ basements playing video games or DnD.  I thought these were good times, and I still look back upon them fondly, but they weren’t perfect.  Girls were still a mythical creature I’ve only read about, and being in the same room as one instilled a sense of panic.  Luckily, though, technology offered away to speak to them without actually sharing the same air.  AOL had it’s issues, but it was the internet, and the internet was good.

After high school I lost contact with some of my friends, but others I was able to stay in touch with through the magic of the internet.  Amidst the whine of the modem connection there was friendship.  One day a friend of mine was sitting at art school, and he had his notebook open.  A girl sitting next to him noticed my screen name written on the paper, and exclaimed it was a character from her favorite show, coincidentally also mine.  He got her screen name for it and I added it to my list.  I remember staring at it for a long time, here was a flesh and blood girl, sharing my digital space.  I kept clicking and typing a greeting, only to close the window at the last moment.  Finally, I took a deep breath and typed as fast as I could, hitting enter before my better judgment was able to stay my hand.

We talked a lot after that.  We shared photos and music, and grew close.  Occasionally I would travel to Chicago to see her (I lived in Indiana at the time).  My life became hectic, as I dropped out of college and bounced between a few crappy jobs.  But still, the internet was at home, and we still talked.  Finally, I landed a help desk job in the Chicago area, which was conveniently only a half-hour drive from her home.  We began hanging out regularly, and as the seasons passed, she became the wife I know and love today.

Today, technology still plays a role in bringing us closer.  While we have things to talk about, and enjoy each others company, our recreational preferences don’t always synch up.  While she’d rather go out for a walk or a movie, I’m generally happy staying in and relaxing.  I get worn out being dragged about (my job keeps me out and on the road most of the time), and staying home too often upsets her.  Finding a balance can be very difficult.  This problem is overcome when we’re able to play video games together, an activity we both really enjoy.  We can spend hours working together towards a goal, and have a lot of fun.  Without technology, that would be one less experience that we could share together.

Because of this, I could never see technology as divisive, even though I’m sure others hide behind the digital wall.   But if you utilize technology to reach out and connect with people, it can definitely serve to bring us all closer together.

Zel-kun out.

Filed Under: Tech, Uncategorized

What color is your collar?

August 19, 2010 By Zel-kun 1 Comment

I often hear people say, “If you don’t work hard, you’ll end up filling potholes for a living,” or “you’ll end up collecting garbage,” or even “you’ll end up working retail for life.”  I have to wonder where this elitism over the working class came from, why some see the people that lay the very foundation of our society as dregs.  Is it because working with your hands is somehow meaningless?  Maybe only animals work outside?  Is working a retail job really so vile?

If it’s because you feel that it takes less skill to do those jobs, you’d be dead wrong.  While I doubt I could pull the guy off the corner fixing the storm drain access and have him fix computers with me, if you hand me a hard hat and tell me to fix that access, I’d be equally lost.  I’ve watched these guys work when we need work done on our sites, and the things they do fly way over my head.  What saw blade to use?  How long should the cut be?  Is this wire safe to cut?  If you think anyone can do that, then you have honestly never watched construction in action.

I guess that person works retail because he fails everything else?  I’ll disagree again.  Like most any job, a retail associate is a craft that can be mastered.  It’s not only knowing where everything is, but knowing what the customer is looking for, even when the customer does not.  When I get an associate that takes her job seriously, my whole day changes.  As a new homeowner, a knowledgeable associate at Home Depot is priceless.

I often find people yelling at retail and food service workers, like somehow they’re entitled to treat their fellow human beings like dirt.  I remember from my days in retail, and I know it happens all the time.  The strangest thing is when a seemingly polite person snaps at things not going entirely their way.  The ‘pleases’ and ‘thank yous’ make way very quickly when the item they want is out of stock.

It’s sad that I appear to be the rarity, the polite customer that doesn’t snap when things don’t go my way.  Just yesterday I went to an auto parts store to pick something up I ordered online, and was told that there was an error in their inventory system, and they didn’t have it.  I could see the poor sales girl brace for impact when she had to tell me there was a mistake.  But I didn’t lash out, because it wasn’t her fault.  No one there is trying to inconvenience me, it’s just the way things go.  It’s the same respect we should give all people, not just the ones who share our color collar.

I appreciate all the things blue-collar workers do to make my day even remotely possible.  Thank you to those who build my roads.  A hearty thanks to my garbage collectors who ensure I’m not waist-deep in waste.  A round of applause to the mechanics who inspects the elevators in my building.  And finally, a bow of gratitude to every one who takes their job seriously, making life better for us all.

You’re awesome.

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Filed Under: Opinion