it's complicated naming babies. my whole life i always had these ideas for names for my children, but then all of a sudden you're pregnant and it's real and there's a daddy you gotta consider. for the longest time i wanted to name a son "thurston" after thurston moore of sonic youth, who was so cool when i saw him play live, talkin about hangin out in science world with his kids before the show. i thought about going to science world one day and seeing thurston moore there with his kids. my head would go *pop*. anyway, i've always loved the name and he shares my birthday so i thought it was a cool fit. but john hates it! he says it reminds him of gilligan's island. what is he, 60?

so then we thought about naming the kid brady. i was watching the super bowl with my brother and said that if the pats won, i'd name the kid brady. of course the giants won (woot! how hot was that?!) and i turned to my brother and said "eli it is then". i was joking though, and thought about brady seriously and both john and i liked it so it seemed like we'd decided. but recently we started discussing middle names for a boy named brady and everything sounded all kentucky backwoodsy, like brady joe, brady bob you can kinda hear the sound of dueling banjos in the background. we were stuck until i was reading an article about the browns' joe jurevicius and the loss of his son, his tattoo for him, etc. and i thought, what the freaking fuck about joseph? john's grandmother's name was josephine, and joseph is the patron saint of my previous home, canada, and one of the patron saints of my current home, mexico. he's also the commie saint, joseph the worker! what better name to give the son of a couple of quasi-commies?

again, middle names became a problem. until i was working on my family tree on ancestry.com and remembered my grandfather's middle name was freeman. john and i both agreed immediately. joseph freeman simmonds it is.

of course, picking a girls name wasn't hard at all, emily courtney simmonds was agreed upon months ago.

i shall find out this friday if it's emily or joseph.

Technorati Tags: baby, names

there is a dog shelter here that, every saturday, openly invites people to the shelter to wash puppies all afternoon in the yard. it's not really necessary to wash the dogs every saturday, but it brings people into the shelter, gives the dogs lots of attention, plus is a great way for fellow dog lovers to meet each other over beers and wet puppies.

yesterday i went or the first time. i can't tell you how great it was. it's not exactly volunteering for the innocence project or an anti-death penalty organization, as i have been itching to do so bad that i've been checking out costs of living in new york and similar hot spots for anti death penalty activism, but fuck, it was fun in a non-selfish, healthy, exhausting sort of way.

this shelter is a start-up, currently they have about 35 dogs. they are not an official charity, but they need donations. if anyone wants to donate, let me know and i can get you in touch with them.

and now, the puppies:





Technorati Tags: puppies, dogs, animal, shelter