This morning we made our way back to the airport, and my tiredness led me to the Starbucks that was installed next to our gate. My mom followed, wearing her brand new “Frick” shirt from the Frick winery in California. While waiting in line, the Frick shirt caught the eye of the man standing in front of me and told my mom that he had the same last name.

I couldn’t believe it, because what-are-the-chances, you say… Well we talked briefly on Frick-based history such as the possibility of our roots tying back to the same locations, aka, being related somehow. Then the barista placed my drink and his on the counter simultaneously and he asked, “Is this the hot chocolate?” She said yes, slid the drink towards him, and on the cup was written in marker:

JACK

I didn’t say much else because I didn’t really register it in a way that I could immediately jump into explaining the background of my Grandpa Jack and what the whole trip was about.

I told my dad about it, and as it seemed more and more unbelievable, we hunted him down at his departure gate. He and his wife were there and introduced themselves to my dad.

Sure enough, name was Jack Frick, named after his father, Jack Frick.

The conversation and connection was pretty amazing to me, so I asked them if I could take their photo for my blog.

Like Fricks, they kindly agreed.

“Where are we meeting?” I ask.

“At…

…The Pantry.”

Today we had to drive 6 hours south to Oakland because all of the flights in town were too full. Before cramming in the van with 6 adults and a baby, what did I eat? A huge omlette with hashbrowns and beef from…

The Pantry.

About 4 hours later we stopped in a little town called Willits and I ate a salad like it was medication.

There were vineyards all along the freeway during the drive, and my Dad knew of one where they make “Frick” branded wine.

We stopped in, met Bill Frick, the man who started Frick winery. While the place seemed to be in the middle of nowhere, it was set up like an enchanted secret place that is wedged somwhere in a timeless reality as if the wise-being holding guard is also serving you, and fully understanding that souls only come about to visit once every few creations.

I knocked back a few wine samples until I found out you can’t actually get just a single glass of wine like a bar, you have to buy a bottle. I let mum and dad keep the peace with Bill Frick, and keep-the-peace they did by buying $75 worth in Frick winery merchadise and a bottle of Cinsaut (Sin-SO) Rose.

I still get nervous about wine tasting for fear that I’m not spitting, sniffing, or reacting enough.

Today we had the funeral. The family got together and talked about the life of Grandpa Jack in the form of an open mic testimonial of the amazing life experiences each of his 7 children shared with him.

Obituary:

John R. “Jack” Frick of McKinleyville, CA, died at home surrounded by family, on July 26, 2011 after a brief illness.

Born in Kansas City, MO to Charles and Margaret Frick, Jack was the youngest of six children. During WWII, he proudly helped build the B-25 bomber and later served as Radioman in the United States Coast Guard.

Meeting his true love and Irish lass at a church picnic, Jack married in 1951, thus beginning his legacy as a loving husband and devoted father. Concurrently, he established a near 30-year-career in Wage Administration for North American Aviation and later, at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory.

His heart and soul will forever live on with his surviving spouse of 60 years, Catherine, sons and daughters, Ellen, Kevin, Tim, Brian, Teresa, Patty, and Charles, their spouses, sixteen grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.

Jack was a life-long and devout Catholic. The Rosary will be recited at Christ the King Catholic Church, 1951 Mckinleyville Ave., Mckinleyville, Ca. at 7:00 PM Thursday, July 28, 2011 with a Funeral mass at 11:00 AM Friday, July 29, 2011. Arrangements are under the care of Goble’s Fortuna Mortuary, Fortuna, Ca.

Across the street there is an eggs-ketchup-&-burgers restaurant called The Pantry. I already had eaten the continental breakfast at the hotel across from ours, but I decided to eat again. My mom got a “side” of fries. They’re so generous at family restaurants.

An hour later, my sister and Tim had just flown in and were hungry, so we headed over to the Greek restaurant across from The Pantry and I ate again. By this point I was getting pretty full.

After eating at the Greek place, we went to my Grandpa’s Rosary ceremony. When it was over, people started talking about maybe getting some food somewhere, we all looked at eachother and somebody said, “I know! let’s go to this place called The Pantry.”

I ate a hot fudge sundae for dinner because I was kind of getting tired of eating the actual meals at The Pantry. After that, everybody sang happy birthday to my cousin Vanessa. Then everybody sang happy birthday to yours truly, because mine was yesterday.

Nobody really wanted to leave The Pantry, so I left early to sip some Jameson with Josh in 106, and cousins caught wind of the party and joined us and we all gave a toast to Jack Frick.

Out of the 2,500 people that came to this site last month, 73 people liked me enough to come back.

So that’s pretty cool.

In October I moved in with Jake, drummer of the oldest version of The Coma Recovery. I currently live at his house with his dog, Monty.

That’s not actually a real picture of Monty. If you can picture this dog without his savvy haircut and shampoo’d fur, then you’ll have Monty.

The greatest experience living with Jake to date was a bright, sunny day in mid-October.  Unbeknownst to Jake, Monty had a day to explore town and had eaten and digested a used condom. Whilst a section of it hung from Monty’s ass, Jake (thinking it was just a clump of spider web) made the dire mistake of using his bare fingers to pull the stretchy, poopy magnum all the way out of Monty’s bum.

Unfortunately I pulled up to the driveway only after Jake had scrubbed his hands for the 5th time over. The story coming from Jake’s mouth combined with his tone of disgust gave me a laugh session that probably added 5 years to my life.

Julia and I have made a point to drink chocolate at Kakawa a lot.

Our drummer Casey from Flood The Sun got married. I may have forgotten to mention that Joel (guitar) got engaged and moved to LA with his lady, Ashley.

My bro Josh had a baby named…

Natalie.

Painted this for Julia.

And all the while I was working at Sunshine Theater…. venue-cleaner by day, bar-back by night.

I quit at the beginning of January. There was only so much dried vomit and hip-hop/metal demographic I could take. Then I was called to be an extra on a movie called Ten Year.

I wore the same thing almost everyday for 3 weeks to work 12-hour days as a background actor. That means I’m going to be one of the cheeseballs in the background pantomiming like a drunk while Channing Tatum gives a star-studded performance.

While the movie was shooting, I caught a deathly flu-like sickness from drinking out of water-filled beer bottles. Never drink the prop-water.

The good news is I’ve made some friends who might want me to be an extra while “Iron Man” Downy Jr. himself flies through the mountainous skies of New Mexico.

Coma is still going strong with a fresh rejection notice just in from South By Southwest.

Both Tommy and Will were sorely disappointed with the news (click to enlarge).

Today I drove to my parent’s house through snow and ice because my neighbor stopped paying his internet bill. When his internet goes down, that means nobody else on the street is getting internet.

As we speak.

If you want the definition of procrastination, you can see a solid example of it by examining the history of my car and its problems.

The last time I worked on my car was circa January 11th. But now that the weather is heating up to unbearable window-sealed levels, I’ve been forced to fix my driver’s side window ASAP.

Today I drove it to Josh’s work where he enjoys his career as an airplane mechanic. He offered to use his airplane-fixing tools to work on my faulty window regulator. Interestingly, while on the way to the airport, my car broke down 20 feet from our intended parking spot due to a completely unrelated radiator problem. So as of today, I can’t drive 1 mile without the engine overheating.

Thankfully, however, my window is now able to roll all the way up and all the way down, completely.

We walked to the Natural History Museum to see if there’d be any good imax flicks playing.  A girl named Rachel was working at the front desk, but I pretended that I’d never met her before and that I was unaware she had some kind of history with my friend Ben Standage during his stay in America (instead of England, or Canada). I presented some margarita-induced charm to her, but I wasn’t very good at it, and she didn’t really care for it. And somewhere in the conversation, I think she pointed at the “closed” sign that was being turned at the front door.

Along the way, I stopped to look at a group of statues that had some kind of southwestern significance (?), but I chose to focus on a statue of Mother Mary and Baby Jesus prancing along on a donkey in the midst of murderous Spanish conquistadors while bearing an expression of approval.

My camera went missing for about 10 minutes, then I found this picture on the camera when I got it back:

Mum made pork loin for dinner. I often get curious about what new company may experience at our dinner table. There’s never really a stable conversation exchanged about usual life-things; mostly a lot of gags based on previous jokes. I don’t even know if our interaction is funny or even understandable to outsiders.

After dinner, Mum and I had a conversation about her encounter with a spiritual medium when she was a teenager, and how most of the medium’s predictions about her life came true. I asked her if she thought it was an overall positive or negative experience. She said that at first she thought it was silly, then later was a little freaked out about it, and came to think it was evil. Intrigued, I told her about past semi-psychic experiences I’ve had where some of my dreams contained events which later came true, which seemed to be positive for me.

These are the conversations I like to have with my mum.

Birthdays seem to have multiple celebrations in my family, so they’re more like birthweeks.

Today Erin threw a surprise party for Josh and a group of us played pool at a cool-people bar, where the prime selection of women and men appear to be manifestations of an MTV reality show cast. It’s always better for me to leave these types of bars before coming down from a beer buzz. Otherwise a part of me buys into the illusion that I don’t belong on this planet.

What I found particularly interesting is how the server girl came to our table multiple times through the night, and would ask everybody individually if they needed anything, skipping me each time; no eye contact, not even a glance. I traded seats with somebody, same result. I thought maybe it could be that she liked me or something, but then I remembered that male/female interactions don’t really work that way after elementary school.

Today was Josh’s birthday, so I went over to join the mini-party. As you can see, Erin burned the pizza. For about an hour I smelled the aroma filling the apartment. I thought she just had the oven on some kind of slow-cook mode. The fun part was when she poked the black crispy cheese bubble, and smoke shot out like a steam whistle. The pizza let out a dying scream. Then I ate some because I was starving.