Who We Are

Better late than never to introduce ourselves., especially since this intro was started a couple of years ago, and never posted. It’s been 15+years since we started this blog, so the who, what, when, where, why and how (coming from an ex-newspaper reporter) are way overdue.

Dorothy & Patrick (Beatrice & Grenville)

So, here it goes, I'm Dorothy, my husband is Patrick, both natives of the Garden State (Plainfield and South Orange) there's always a NJ connection. We're both happily retired now. college degrees are in journalism and communications My working years were spent in the corporate world and also as a reporter and photographer with a weekly newspaper group, my favorite and lowest paying job at the time. 

Patrick's background is in public safety and marine biology which seems like an unlikely combination, but they were not concurrent. After 25 years as a NJ firefighter, he retired with the rank of captain, then returned to college earning a degree in marine science. That started his second career, in retirement, as a naturalist at the Jersey shore, close to where we were living at the time. It was his favorite job.

Backing up a bit, comes the story of how we met, which isn't a tale of knowing each other for years. Instead, our meet-up came online after past romances/marriages. The site we connected on was Web Personals. Founded in the mid-1990s, WP was considered the first online dating site before social media exploded. For 3 months, we communicated only by text messages before a first date that lasted 10 hours (we had lots of catching up to do). Dating lasted 2 years; we married in 1999. .

Our first home together in Onley, VA

A few years after retirement(s), we relocated to the Eastern shore of VA in 2002 and bought an older (1913) home in Onley, VA, that needed a bit lots of updating. In between working on the house and yard, we learned about blogging and decided to try it. The first short post was mid-January 2010, when Grenville posted that we wanted to share stuff we were doing. The “plan” was to share about ourselves, home, family, friends. In short, we wanted folks to get to know us and vice versa. Even though we had scant comments the first couple of years, we kept on posting. Back then, we both posted, however, in recent years, Beatrice has become the main contributor with input and suggestions from Grenville.

Blog name, The Frog & Penguinn was what we called our VA home. OK, not everyone names their house, but it was common in where we lived in a small VA town. The double N misspelling in penguin was deliberate, but the house was never an inn, although we briefly thought of a B&B. The house and later blog name came from for our collection of frogs and penguins (FYI never let anyone know you like something, you’ll be inundated). 

Blogger names. We wanted to have fun and were a bit unsure of this new venture, so rather than use our first names, we became Beatrice & Grenville, after Boyds Bears figurines and added middle initials: Patrick became Grenville T. Boyd; Dorothy was Beatrice P. Boyd. Today, we use our actual and blogger names interchangeably. Many long-time readers know us as both, some blog newcomers may not.

Clocktower Apartments and the Nashua River as seen from Main Street 

In 2015, we relocated to Nashua, NH leaving VA because of (in no order): insufficient medical facilities, summertime heat, missing winter, wanting to be closer to family. We went from living in a home where we did indoor and outdoor work to a rental apartment (Clocktower Apartments) in a former textile mill (Nashua Manufacturing Corporation). It was a big change from being homeowners, but now we're quite comfortable with this lifestyle — no maintenance, yard work or repairs, when any repair/replacement is needed, it's a phone 📞 to the main office. And, there's indoor parking, a really big plus in New England (think cold and snow).

Our VA home before we moved

We still owned the VA house after signing the apt lease. After a couple years of going back and forth between VA and NH, the Frog & Penguinn was (finally) sold after being on the market longer than we'd anticipated. The words location, location, location truly apply when selling a home in a very small town like Onley, VA (pop. 500) with limited attractions and no walking to anything, unlike here in Nashua — there was no downtown, unless you included the post office and thrift store. It was not a happening town.

We enjoy sharing our lives, adventures, celebrations, special occasions and nearly everything else. Comments have increased over the years, many long-time fellow bloggers have become like friends we've never met (yet). Fortunately, we have several bloggers while on U.S. road trips and even travels abroad, some more than once. Hopefully, more meet-ups will happen in the future.

There's no shortage of view from our 5th floor apartment

While The Frog & Penguinn is no longer our physical home, it's remains our blog home. We don't have any plans of relocating soon. We like it here. If you're ever in the Nashua, NH, area let us know. Maybe we can arrange a meet-up 😀.