I am puzzled re the horizontal mailboxes. Mailboxes are mailboxes–there are vertical one, slots, free-standing large boxes, smallish more rectangular ones that I would consider vertical, and we have one that is wider than it is tall, so I suppose it’s horizontal…
We tend to have doorknobs for interior doors, but our patio and French doors both have handles. Just sharing so you’ll know that they do exist, but are not as common here.
And I do hope you meant Cranberry sauce (tranberry sounds like something genetically modified…)
How did you like the football? We didn’t watch any (except BIL who almost wouldn’t come to dinner because of the game. BIL is an ass), but I believe Green Bay lost, so Detroit must have been a happy place yesterday.
WHAT? My BIL is an ass. A total ass. He came to the table and said that Green Bay had lost. And I immediately thought of this place and this thread and thought-oh, good, CW will have an extra good Tgiving. So, BIL is an ass, and an incorrect moron as well. I can live with that.
And that should teach me to not rely on him for even the smallest of news items.
Mailboxes tend to follow certain patterns:
In apartment buildings where they are clustered ON a wall, they will often have a slot at the top for deposit, then the face opens out from the wall to give access to the vertically deposited mail. (After finding no images of these, I wonder if the USPS declared them unusable and required they be replaced. I had one when living in an aprtment 25 years ago and it was the sort where Dirty Harry defused a bomb (and his partner did not) in the original Dirty Harry movie.)
In apartment buildings where they are clustered IN a wall, the box extends horizontally into the wall with a slot at the top and the face is merely a small door giving access. The door may drop down or swing out.
In neigborhoods where the individual houses are close together, they may either have a mail slot in the door or they may have a simple box with a trap door lid next to the front door. These boxes can have all sorts of different shapes and, when I was a kid, they often were not even locked.
In many new condominium/townhouse developments, the post office requires that the mailboxes be treated as though it was an apartment building and the boxes are all grouped as if they were built into a wall, somewhere outside the building(s). The mail carrier and owner each use a key to get into the box rather than having a slot.
In neighborhoods where the individual houses are too far apart to allow walking delivery, the boxes will be set on posts with a front drop door to allow the mail carrier to insert the mail from a vehicle.
Cheap wooden floors are easier to maintain with carpet. More expensive hardwood floors tend to be shown off. The flooring in new houses is often nothing more than plywood or pressed board that has to be carpeted (or covered with tile or linoleum in bathrooms and kitchens).
The story I have heard about doorknobs was that they were, originally, a mark of elegance, requiring a skilled craftsman to turn them well. When manufacturing processes got to the point where knobs could be mass produced, they became a quick way for the middle class and poor to emulate the rich, so they were installed everywhere. Eventually, they came to be seen as the “normal” door openers and handles were forgotten. (Those of us with aging parents with arthritic hands have begun rediscovering handles and installing those.)
Oh, shoot. I had somehow gotten the idea that today’s football game was Super Bowl, so I asked an online friend when the Super Bowl starts and he simply said: “Well… February next year”, thusly I gave up on the idea. Though I did catch a bit of football while zapping the channels earlier today. I didn’t understand much of it and I didn’t find it very interesting either - it would probably have been better with an American friend that could have explained what I was watching.
And yes, I meant cranberries. *Tranbär *is the swedish name.
A horizontal mailbox is what I would concider one in which you put in the mail sideways, rather than dropping it.
And no, I’m putting the mall on hold until next week. I understand that today is “Black friday”, but I’m not bold enough to take on an already complex bus schedule on a holiday. tomndebb: Thank you for that informative post! I understand that carpeting can have its positive sides. It was amusing to see carpeting in the kitchen though, surely that must be unpractical.
That’s not all, some people have carpeting in their bathrooms. :barf: Not everyone has extensive carpeting in the U.S. I personally think it is tacky as hell for most applications and we only have it in one bedroom.
I’m surprised there are any games today. Thanksgiving is the big day for football. The only games today would probably be college games, and those are less interesting in a lot of ways IMO. (Although some people are positively fanatical about college football.)
I’ve never seen that, so that’s not very common here. I’ve heard of it.
A college friend had wall to wall carpet in her kitchen growing up–it was the indoor/outdoor stuff. She said her mom loved it, but I could never see how. Carpet in a kitchen is not common in the USA, AFAIK.
My house has hardwood floors with rugs throughout the first floor, until you get to the family room (which has the master bedroom added on to it–late addition to the house)–they have wall to wall, and we have wall to wall upstairs where there is no hardwood (it used to be the attic when the house was built in the 1930s). I’ve never understood carpet in any bathroom, period–except for rugs in front of the tub/shower etc. I like tile, myself.
Don’t worry about missing football. The game is simple to learn, slow to watch (it is more fun to play–I used to play touch football in the neighborhood when I was a girl) and boring most of the time. If you are used to the nonstop action of hockey or soccer or rugby–American football will not excite you. IMO, no loss that you missed it!
I am also not brave enough to venture out on Black Friday. I’ll stay in where it’s warm and drink tea…
How do you find the weather? Is is sunnier for you? Warmer or colder than Sweden this time of year?
I never knew that about the doorknobs–thanks, tomndebb!
I’ve only known a couple of houses that had carpet in either the kitchen or bathroom. It is really pretty rare (and dumb). Kitchens tend to be linoleum or some more recent substitute. Bathrooms are often tile (although there is a lot of linoleum-like flooring there, too).
Glad to hear you enjoyed the holiday, please tell me you tried pumpkin pie!
We’ve got to plan this dopefest, folks. If the Ann Arbor folks won’t get busy and figure something out, and if we don’t have more people that can make it than I have seating, I’ll volunteer to host here. LOUNE can pick you up and bring you here, since it’s not to far out of the way. (I’m near Metro airport and very easy to find, for everyone else.)
What say you, cw? Would you prefer something quieter and more private or getting to see the lovely Ann Arbor and more public?
I would really offer my home (Ypsilanti, practically in Ann Arbor) but we have a one bedroom apartment, and I don’t see how it would be very practical. But if we want to plan something – at a restaurant, even–I’m willing to participate. Or if somebody does have a home that’s a good accommodation, I’d bring something to pass.
If it were summertime, I would insist we do something at the Arboretum, but in the winter the parks lose their attractiveness. There are all sorts of lively places to hang out in Ann Arbor, but I’m usually in watching DVDs and reading books on the weekends, so someone more social is going to have to step in and recommend a place. We have some jazz clubs, some comedy clubs and a slew of fantastic restaurants, so there’s bound to be some place exciting.
But I’ll be there with bells on whether it’s in A2 or Detroit.
I think someone should probably start a new thread on this.
When I was growing up I watched ABS’s Wide World Of Sports. I tended to watch a lot of skiing and bobsledding and other Winter sports. I never watched traditional American sports. It’s only in the last few years that I’ve been making a modest effort to watch football. Fortunately I had a patient friend to explain things to me.
In the past when I’d flip by a game on TV my impression was ‘They play for twelve seconds, and then everyone stands around for a few minutes. Then they line up and play for ten seconds, and then everyone stands around for a while. Then there’s a commercial break, after which the players stand around. Then they play for a few seconds…’ I just didn’t get it. But then I looked at it another way. Football is a series of battles fought to win a war. The goal is to take enemy territory (advance up the field) and take their capital (score a touchdown). Whichever side defeats the other the most times wins a series of wars. It can also be viewed as a bit of a chess game, where a series of small battles and strategic maneuvers are used to defeat the enemy. Put into a military campaign analogy, it made much more sense to me.
I’m super late to this, but welcome to our little corner of the world, ** cactus waltz**, and I’ll happily participate in another A2 doper gathering.
I’m booked up with work, teaching, some gigs, some travel, and assorted holiday commitments, but if I’m free and able, I’m there. I don’t think I can organize, though. For one thing, I suck at doing that. For another…I really suck at doing that…
