Granite

I am pleased to introduce to you the New Dog. Her name is Granite, but I've taken to calling her Grant: it sounds less like a Noun and more like a Name. Also, Grant is the character played by Clea Duvall in But I'm a Cheerleader.

Grant fits in well enough with Scott, Kricket and Ellis. In fact her introduction to them was relatively painless. Scott was depressed for a day and the cats haven't seemed to notice. They don't notice much besides the fish tank and the level of food in their bowl anyway.
The member of the household who Did have a problem with the New Dog was Laura. Grant is a twitchy, neurotic, anxious little Jack Russell/Spaniel mix (near as I can tell). Her anxiety is decreasing with every day, and she is a sweet dog. Her good qualities are--and as they reveal themselves I'm sure the list will grow-- 1. She doesn't run away when she goes outside 2. She has very few annoying habits. Her main flaw, however, is that she is not a Lab. I may have told a lie: "Laura, let's get this dog, It's part Lab". What I really meant to say was "it's a mix, therefore, we'll never know its ancestry, and so any breed of dog--including Lab--is equally probably as to the actual parentage of this dog" Ooops.

As Grant warms up to the house, so does Laura to Grant. In fact, last night Laura even petted the dog, and addressed her by her new given name rather than "Concrete".
We took the dogs to the beach on Sunday: this is a picture of Laura yelling "That dog won't swim!" For the record, the water was cold and it was overcast and windy. Scott wasn't swimming either.

I'm not sure we could say the dog is Like Granite. But I can say a few words about Granite--which I suppose the average person doesn't really think much about. There's a reason: Granite is a Rock. Some people like rocks. Laura LOVES rocks.

Granite comes from the Latin --a grain. This references the coarse grainy texture that some granite has. The viscosity of granite at standard temperature and pressure is really really high. It is very hard, and like many other hard rocks it is used commonly in construction of things like buildings and Mormon Temples.

Granite is an igneous rock: it is formed when magma intrudes other rocks and forms hard pockets of more rock. It's composed mainly of SiO2, but other chemical components vary by region. There are several types of granite that are distinguised by the type of rock they melted to make: I-type granite is made from other igneous rocks, s-type is made from sedementary rocks and m-type forms when magma melts other magma based rocks. However m-type granite is quite rare because for some reason that I don't understand, it's hard to turn basalt into granite.

Lots of things we like are made of granite: Statues Mormon Temples, kitchen counter tops, sarcophagi of ancient Egypt, pyramids, New HampshireElberton, Georgia and Half Dome in Yosemite...tons of things.