Let's just call him...Mingus...

It was a week before we gave our new puppy a name. We wanted a name that spoke to both of us---something hip hop...something jazz...something special....

We tried Dilla( after J-Dilla)...Phife (after Phife Dawg) and then somehow we landed on Jasper. "Jasper's" is one of our favorite restaurants but it also sounded like the name of some old black Morgan Freeman type character.... scratch that!

We tried Puma, Adobo.....and finally we went back to Kris' gut instinct.

We named him Mingus after jazz bassist extraordinaire, Charles Mingus. Kris has always been a huge fan and the more I learned about him, the more I could respect his skill, talent and legacy. I even gave Kris the the classic,"Tonight at Noon" record(thanks Nick!) for his birthday. We later framed that record on a wall in our living room.

Charles Mingus did great things for jazz music and we had no doubt that Mingus the dog would work wonders in our family.

The very second we called him Mingus is the very second he ran over to us happily. Ahhhh we have a winner....