Titelmissbrauch

It is hunting season here in Da Mitten. This doe is hiding out in plain sight in my yard. I ran through dense fog yesterday and heard plenty of gun shots. Could they see what they were shooting  at?

back and white Greenwood

interesting restroom sign from the café below

an interesting place. Plenty of 'speidies' on the menu. What's a speidie? Stay tuned.

One of the welcoming signs to the place we stayed in outside of Corning. You can barely make out the buildings in the background. Nothing was lit.

According to some message that I received from Blogger yesterday, I have a legal obligation to inform my EU readers that cookies may be being sent if they open my blog unless they affix an s to the end of the hppt part of my address. I do not use Ad sense or even Google plus. I would think most of the cookies are generated by Blogger itself. I do use 'third party' platforms, just statcounter and flag counter. So if you don't want cookies, don't open those apps up. Hope this is the only warning I am obligated to place. I don't seem to have very many EU readers any more, less so thanks to Brexit.

My title refers to an absurd law on the books in Germany: misuse of titles. The WSJ (an ever shrinking paper, they got rid of the science and medicine sections, what good is it, I ask Steve) had a story about this woman in Germany who recently was paid a visit by the local police. Her kids on Groupon had paid for an honorary title for her "Doctor of Immortality" and she had blogged about it. That turned out to be a crime, saying you have a doctorate when you do not. Until recently, it was a crime to be called 'doctor' or 'professor' unless you received your advanced degree from a German Institution. Ivy league PhDs did not count as a visiting professor found out. They now are 'accepted'.

Speidies..say what? We stopped in Binghamton, NY  for lunch at a café that looked interesting and would be easy for us to find. If we had more time, I would have gone to my favorite park as a child, Ross Park, located at a bottom of a gorge that presumably has the most carousels in the world. There were several varieties of speidies (pronounced speedies) offered. What are those? Local dialect for kabobs.

What local words do we have here? Fragels which are deep fried raisin bagels rolled in cinnamon and sugar. They have a very short self life quickly morphing into lead. When I lived in the co-op, a housemate was the night manager of The Bagel Factory, would bring us the unsold fragels that we would gnaw on. I was living on a strict budget supplemented by another housemate who would bring leftover Chinese food from the restaurant she worked at. No more Bagel Factory but another store bought their trademark and sells them near my old house.

Party Store: When we were staying in Hart, MI and found out that the local brewery featured in our brochure was closed that day, I complained to a couple from Florida that we should have stopped at the party store and bought some beer. They were confused thinking that a party store was where you buy balloons and decorations but here in da Mitten, it is a convenience store. Would we ride another 2 miles round trip to buy beer? No one wanted to get back on that bike. We already rode 20 miles more than advertised due to detours and a ride director who was weak with math. Found the Pour House so we were not beerless.

Coney Islands: Our version of an East Coast Diner usually run by Greeks. Originally where one could buy a chili covered hotdog, which is not available on the 'real' Coney Island that Steve grew up on. What we buy at the local Coney Island is lemon rice soup. I think Coney Islands now can be found in Ohio.

It is warm out. I hope to take one last long bike ride when the traffic clears as the cold comes tomorrow along with wind.

The night before, we had Miss Maya. She wanted a 'cacuzzi'. Not too relaxing with her splashing around but if she is given a task, she can focus much longer than the millisecond she devoted before to it. I have a big picture puzzle, a ten foot train, whose pieces consist of train cars with the alphabet letters. She knows all the letters but she can not answer what comes after P, which concerns me. She was able to look at the box to see which piece comes next so that's good. It took her a half hour, which is eons for her.

We are to encourage her to eat at every turn. Hard to convince someone to eat who doesn't want to. Meanwhile I want too much. Mom's group tonight so that will be a challenge. Extra fun, I am finally having a colonoscopy Monday. Part of the prep means no seeds, nuts and beans 3 days in advance. I did warn the hostess who said she will accommodate me but I hate to be 'that person'.