With car packed with books, clothes for warm and cool weather, we set off for our winter snowbird sojourn – a road trip through the South and up through Texas Santa Fe, New Mexico.

We planned a general route and have made the technological switch from road maps to Google maps on our phones. I was trying to come up with a good name for our “road guide”- Gertrude just wasn’t feeling right, and it wasn’t until Fayetteville, North Carolina that we discovered a proper name for our Google voice.

Two block away from our dinner stop at a delightful Turkish restaurant the road was blocked by a train – not a train crossing an intersection, but a really long train on tracks that ran straight down the middle of the street. When the train came to a dead stop and everyone else around us started making u-turns in the road, we followed suit. Well “Madam Google” was not having it and tried valiantly, and insistently, to get us to drive through the parked train. It was then that David realized her true name is Fräulein Bosch and that she is a close cousin to Herr Bosch, our highly scheduled and persistent dishwasher.

When our last Maytag died, we really wanted a quiet dishwasher and went with a Bosch. While washing this appliance is indeed very quiet, but when it is done, it beeps incessantly. Please komm sofort! Ze dishes are done. Schnell!

David dubbed the tyrannical dishwasher Herr Bosch. Little did I know that my iphone held such a Germanic persona…

We are not yet on a first name basis.