Cos' Blog

OK, so this one will be my last one for the night, I promise. After seeing the picture from the last post, I realized that I never posted this on the blog, that I only posted these pictures on my Twitter account. Just goes to show you, the blog might be quiet on some days but the twitter account might be going. You might just miss some things if you’re not checking both.

Anyway, I took the following pic of Cassie while we were outside on May 7th:

And for the life of me I thought she looked like Mariyln Monroe, so much so that I knew the picture that this looked like. I went right to google and typed in the name Mariyln Monroe and sure enough one of the first pics that pops up is the one I’m looking for. And here is the picture analysis:

Pretty startling huh?

–Cos

Cassie is looking really tired, so instead of subjecting her to the torture of being downstairs with me, instead of upstairs with Melissa and Peanut looks like I’m keeping him up by staying up and I’m just not in the mood to scare the crap out of myself by watching 2012: Startling New Secrets, I think I’m going to go to bed and make myself go to sleep…

Originally sent to me by Melissa on March 18, 2009, this e-mail has been in my yahoo mail for over a year with a flag on it to post on here. Things have been busy and/or I was just lazy and never went to check back.

Who is your real friend?

This really works…!?

If you don’t believe it, just try this experiment.

Put your dog and your spouse in the trunk of the car for an hour.

When you open the trunk, which one is really happy to see you?

The e-mail may have been waiting to be posted for over a year, but this picture was taken on May 7th, it made it to my Twitter account but it never made it to the blog…

Here is one I sent myself on July 13th. I always questioned this one, I just figured it was somewhere in the UK, but the answer is a little more surprising.

This one comes from Mental Floss:

Where is Old Jersey? (and 6 other ‘New’ location origins)
by David K. Israel – July 13, 2010 – 11:33 AM

I grew up in New Jersey… exit 4, to be more precise. But it wasn’t until I left home that I actually started to think about the original Jersey, off the coast of France. Technically, the original Jersey is a bailiwick composed of an island and two groups of small islands, which, along with another bailiwick called Guernsey, make up the Channel Islands. Jersey isn’t part of the U.K., nor is it a full-member state of the EU, but is a separate possession of The Crown in Right of the United Kingdom.

So why is New Jersey named after Jersey? Well, When Charles II of England was exiled in Jersey, a man named Sir George Carteret, a royalist statesman in Jersey, often came to the monarch’s assistance. To repay the favor, later Charless II gave Carteret a huge tract of land over in the American colonies where Sir Bruce Springsteen would later grow up, which Carteret promptly named New Jersey. This also answers the question: why is there a borough in Middlesex County, NJ called Carteret? Glad we cleared that one up, aren’t you?

Okay, but what about New Brunswick, NJ?

Well, in 1714, the area originally inhabited by the Lenape Native Americans was named New Brunswick after the city of Braunschweig, in state of Lower Saxony, in Germany. Bruno II, a Saxon count who lived during the 11th century, settled the original area in Germany and the town is named after him (Bruno + wik).

Leaving New Jersey and traveling into New York, which, of course, was New Amsterdam, we come to the awfully quaint village of New Paltz, NY. Founded in 1678 by French Huguenots, including Louis DuBois, who lived in Mannheim, Germany, for a brief period of time before sailing on to the New Land, New Paltz is probably most famous for being the place Penny got an abortion in the Dirty Dancing.

But what about the name? Well, Mannheim, Germany was a major town of the Rhenish Palatinate or, in German, the Rheinpfalz (try saying that with a saltine in your mouth!). Take away the Rhein and you’re left with pfalz, which the good people of Mannheim pronounced Paltz! When they made their way to New York, it was a no-brainer to call the land New Paltz.

New Rochelle, located in Westchester County, New York, was originally settled by refugee Huguenots in 1688 who were on the run from Catholic-instigated massacres back in France. As history would have it, many of the pioneers hailed from the city of La Rochelle, France, which is in south-western France on the Bay of Biscay.

Moving north to Connecticut, we come to one of the most affluent communities in the US, New Canaan, which takes its name first from the parish established in 1731 called Canaan. When the parish finally became a town in 1801, they called it New Canaan. Of course, the original Canaan was a tract of land defined in the Bible as the “Land of Canaan,” which, according to the Canaanites, extended from Lebanon southward across Gaza to the “Brook of Egypt” and eastward to the Jordan River Valley.

Our last stop on this Old/New tour is New Hampshire.

The original Hampshire is on the southern coast of England Hampshire, sometimes historically referred to as Southamptonshire, Hamptonshire, and the County of Southampton, which may answer all sort of questions about those precious Hamptons on Long Island. Since Hampshire was on the coast, it made for easy access back in the 17th century for those leaving England and settling in the region they then called New Hampshire.
New Durham, NH was named after Durham, NH, which got its name from England, as well. New Durham is probably best known as the place where Reverend Benjamin Randall founded the then-new religious denomination in 1780 called the Free Will Baptists, later known as Free Baptists. The original Durahm is located in north east of England and is home to Durham University, England’s third oldest educational institute after Oxford and Cambridge. It’s located not too far from Durham’s city center, er, rather centre.

Melissa is asleep and I’ve been up not doing much…I think I’m kind of sad/feeling like I need to do something, now that the puppies aren’t here. I mean we’ve been working hard with them and now its just quiet in the house. Anyway, I can’t go to sleep just yet and I’m thinking one way to get my mind off of things (who knew I’d react this way?) I’m going to start emptying out some things from my e-mail. Some stuff is brand new, others are old! I’ll put the dates that I got them up as I post them.

This one is new, like yesterday new, from yahoo.com:

Both Zoey and Joey were adopted today. Both to our joy and sadness. Joy for the obvious reasons that they went to good homes (we hope) sadness because dammit, we got kind of attached to them over the course of the last week. We knew we had two unique little puppies, but somehow we thought we’d at least have one come back.

Right from the start people were attracted to these two, probably for their fresh and unique features. We learned that someone put an application in during the week and she came with her family to look at her and Joey had a handful of people that stopped and asked us about him and at least one person put in an application but we don’t know if he went with those people or not.

I’m so happy that we were able to foster this past week, I don’t know if we’ll do it again, probably something, but I’m also so very proud of Melissa. She took the pictures of the pups and she also wrote up what was placed on Petfinder, which I just copied off of the site, because I know that they take it down soon after the adoption:

Zoey and Joey brother and sister Shepard mixes from GA. They really are the sweetest puppies! Pretty much crate trained (no accidents in the house so far!). Zoey is the more outgoing of the two while Joey is a little more mellow. They are great puppies who love to play together and then go relax in their crate. They also love a good belly rub! They are sure to make great loving pets!

The one family that we know Zoey went to was a nice young family with two little girls who were just crazy about her. And on our way home from Petsmart I told Melissa that she should be happy, that because of what she wrote and the pictures that she put up on Petfinder as well as lovingly take care of these two puppies, they are going to go to two great homes. They were going to be Cassie for some families tonight.

While the kitchen might be a lot quieter and a lot less energetic. Cassie finds herself playing with both dog and puppy toys and is now simply playing with herself or in our face. It really was a great experience. I hope that they are happy with the families that they went off with and live extremely long and amazing lives.

Thank you Zoey and Joey for being the best two foster puppies we could have ever asked for.

–Cos