I didn't. Meade went to Whole Foods and bought some cheese curds and other normal items. I did contemplate buying a ping pong table. How much space at either end do you really need? I'm seeing 5 feet, which means you need a 19 foot room. But we'll also wheel it outdoors, where there's plenty of room, but maybe that will make indoor limitations more aggravating. Any advice? Would we need more room if we called it table tennis? That's a serious question!
Anyway, if you've got some shopping to do, please considering doing it in a way that supports this blog by going into Amazon through The Althouse Portal.
November 28, 2015
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
49 comments:
We laid one over the pool table on T-Day and had about 3' at each end no problem for our skill level. Perfect for the kids - er...30 year old adults - to play beer pong for our amusement.
Five feet is fine unless and until your players get really good. (A hundred years ago I was pretty darned good.) Then some styles of play need more room.
No, other than the weekly food shopping. Less crowded than usual there. Black Friday being a weird kind of day anyway.
"I'm seeing 5 feet, which means you need a 19 foot room. But we'll also wheel it outdoors, where there's plenty of room, but maybe that will make indoor limitations more aggravating."
That just begs for the Kramer in a small room playing pool..
You're going to need more that five feet.
I am Laslo.
No. Didn't leave the house except to do my daily death march/health walk. Had no reason to be involved in the idiocy.
"You're going to need more that five feet."
At times you are going to be three feet back from the table. You will move your paddle a foot or more behind you at times. One step back and you're hitting the wall with the paddle.
Knowing that the wall is THAT close won't leave your mind once you smack it once, inhibiting future play.
We have a table in our Design department that often doubles as a ping-pong table: You're going to need more that five feet.
I am Laslo.
Ping Pong tables are second only to rowing machines to store folded clothes.
We were going to go walking in the mall early yesterday, because a lot of the stores were going to open early. But we slept in. Or, at least she did. Eventually, last evening, I did go to Home Depot to buy sand and salt to carry in my one wheel drive Tahoe - we got stuck on Thanksgiving at the country club up in the mountains. Valet got it out with a lot of something that works like salt, which melted the snow down to the pavement. Why would anyone buy a one wheel drive SUV? I blame this on my partner, who calls herself a "desert rat". My 4x4 pickup is 1,000 miles away back up in MT, and she won't ride in it anyway, and esp. not when dressed up for Thanksgiving dinner. Every year, I plan on getting a 4x4 in CO, and ultimately seem to fail. This is the third season now, since I sold my last Audi Quattro, and I hadn't not had one before then, since I bought my first one in 1987. Actually looked at a nice A4 this fall, but it sold too fast.
I did try to go online with Sam's Club Thursday, but the one thing that I was interested in sold out early. Last year, I bought a 48" TV at the Sam's Club in Bullhead City, AZ on Black Friday. I have a Plus/Corporate membership, which got me in early. But, my brother convinced me to trade it in for a better quality, smaller screen, TV for our father.
I bought the annual new PJs for the kids online from Kohl's. That was the extent of my Black Friday shopping, though we're not Prime members and Amazon seems to be lengthening it's shipping times, so I should probably get on the rest of the list...
Almost nothing. Amazon had little that appealed this year. Quite a change from a few years ago.
If you are good players you need the room to be wide as well. If you are just playing a concrete version of the computer game Pong, not so much.
We watched a wonderful horror movie Thursday night called "Dr. Terror's House of Horrors", which led to my wife wanting some other movies by Freddie Francis and Amicus Productions. We bought those yesterday. That was it. No other Black Friday shopping.
The movie made me scream in at least two different places; the segment with the severed hand and the segment with the vampires. I totally recommend it to any horror maven.
Yes. I bought a book on duck decoys for $1 at a flea market. It will be a Christmas present for my son. Magnificent book and he will love it.
"Would we need more room if we called it table tennis? That's a serious question!"
If you need to ask, you won't.
Chicago has the solution. Aggrieved blacks shut down the main shopping street and the rest riot at Walmart.
Ping Pong outside in the wind brings a whole new dimension.
Bought toner for my Brother printer, which wouldn't qualify for Black Friday except that Staples had a BF 25% off coupon that brought the price nearer the Amazon range. Later today, the wife and daughter will be hitting the craft store for yarn for their projects.
Playing outside is fun until the wind kicks in. Our table is in our screened porch year round, which is about 20 feet.
Do you have a garage? That's a good place to set up a ping pong table.
Don't forget the overhead room as well.
You can adapt to what ever confines you have, but roominess is better if possible.
Don't forget to bring table in every day. If it gets rained on it will wreck the table.
I'm not close to being good at ping pong. I want three yards. You'll most often stand a yard behind the table, like Laslo says. I'd consider two yards barely playable. If you play nice a few feet might feel OK. But that's not ping pong. Outdoor play is often a nuisance. The wind is too likely to interfere. This might be considered an enhancement I suppose.
I did buy a home appliance at a local electronics store. This was the first time I had ever bothered with Black Friday sales, and I bought the item for 50% off list price. There was a bit of activity in the store, but no mad crowds, no atmosphere of frenzy. I left my apartment, did my shopping, and was back home in just over an hour.
But we'll also wheel it outdoors, where there's plenty of room and sometimes challenging winds.
Black Friday sales started the previous weekend. By the day after Thanksgiving, it had faded to a medium gray.
So we slept in.
How much space at either end do you really need?
It depends.
Do you intend playing with paddle or a nunchuck?
I was like Meade, I went to Market Basket and got basic food items like cheese, eggs and garlic.
I do not like to play ping pong outside--the slightest wind makes play very unpredictable. 5 feet from either end of the table seems like a bare minimum: I like to stand about an arm's length from the table and want enough room for a good back swing.
Probably wont matter since it is likely to evolve into a storage shelf.
Bruce Hayden, buy a plastic container of cat liter. It's works great for tires to get traction on ice or snow.
Stores great for year after year.
5 feet is fine for family. How tall is the ceiling?
"Dr. Terror's House of Horrors"... yeah, I remember that one. I remember a college friend who'd always bring it up, so much that it was a running joke.
"Do you have a garage? That's a good place to set up a ping pong table."
We have a tandem garage (a double garage that's double in length only). But it's full of stuff. No place to put a table. But we have a room on the lower level that's not used for much of anything. In its time it's been "the studio." I used to paint there, but never paint anymore. It's one of several rooms in the house that aren't used for anything.
I bought a mandolin from a fantastic guitar shop in Pennsylvania: D-Town Guitars. Not an Amazon affiliate, alas. Althouse.com should issue its own credit card. (That's probably about a week away in Amazon time.)
Whole Foods? Yicks...
I just took the trouble to measure the room. It's a little over 19 feet long, so I think it will work. As for width, the main concern is a spiral staircase, but at the narrowest point, it's over 6 feet of clear space. The ceilings have beams in them, so the available height is to the beam, and that's 8 feet.
Bruce Hayden, buy a plastic container of cat liter. It's works great for tires to get traction on ice or snow
Already had a bag and a half of kitty litter in the vehicle. Used it the last two winters up in the mountains. And, I also have chains. But, rarely have snow for a long enough distance to make them worth putting on. Not sure of the advantages of kitty litter over sand or gravel (I bought two bags of sand and one of gravel), except maybe that it is lighter, and what I probably need is heavier. Normally, I don't believe in stuff that operates like salt to melt snow (that is a Midwestern and east coast thing), but the valets yesterday dumped a bunch of it around my wheels, and a couple hours later, the pavement underneath was dry enough that I could just drive off.
Buying the Tahoe made me feel so stupid. I have been driving snow (and some ice) for almost 50 years now. Bought it from my partner, whose ex bought it for her at a police auction in AZ. Never thought that anyone would have a 1 wheel drive vehicle in MT. But, they both spent most of their lives around desert, and not mountains, so figure they didn't know better. But, I should have. I first discovered the problem when I was living in NW NV, just down from Tahoe on the flats (could see the Heavenly Valley ski area from work and from home). Got stuck one of the first times I drove it in the snow. Had a 3/4 ton GMC Suburban at the time that made quick work of yanking the Tahoe out. And, had to do so a couple more times that winter.
I ordered it!
"'Would we need more room if we called it table tennis? That's a serious question!' If you need to ask, you won't."
I formulated the question based on what someone who plays competitively and calls it "table tennis" told me: "Ping pong" is what people who don't play seriously call it. I said I like to say "ping pong" because it's a cooler-sounding term. "Table tennis" is saying it's a smaller version of something else, making the something else seem preferable.
Bought some clothes, some apps, some programs, and a lot of board games. None through Amazon though.
"Would we need more room if we called it table tennis?"
Sure, sure call it whatever you like.
You need a "Black Friday" app, that creates a virtual version of the real thing; your readers would competitively shop for the best Amazon deals ( "best" defined only as the stuff a bunch of other readers want), and could grab shit out of other reader's Amazon baskets just before they could check out. Get into the spirit of the holiday, Ann.
How much space at either end do you really need?
If you're gonna play any Chinese people, about 12 feet.
I don't know the recommended space at table ends but please consult Graphic Standards, a reference book for architects and interior designers. That book (which may, at this time, be on the web)diagrams a wealth of interior and exterior space requirements for work and play. My guess is that five feet may be a minimum but ten feet is a whole lot better.
I've read that 4 feet could work, but the basic minimum is 5, and that's what we have in this room. There's the alternative of removing a wall to increase the space. We might do that! The wall just boxes in the area that has the furnace, which isn't really necessary. Partly, I'm interested in make sense out of this room, which has very nice windows and access to the backyard. There's a spiral staircase that comes up into the room we use a lot. Why have that hole in the floor (the staircase) in the main room if that room underneath it isn't used? There's something aesthetically important about finding a meaning for that room. I'm picturing getting some wintertime activity out of ping pong, which I used to really enjoy... 40 years ago.
Cheese curds are not a "normal" item.
I was waiting for somebody to say that.
Glad to oblige.
I bought some books, one new, a couple of used. No, not for Xmas presents, for myself.
AllenS said...
Bruce Hayden, buy a plastic container of cat liter. It's works great for tires to get traction on ice or snow.
Stores great for year after year.
Bruce Hayden replied...
Already had a bag and a half of kitty litter in the vehicle. Used it the last two winters up in the mountains. And, I also have chains. But, rarely have snow for a long enough distance to make them worth putting on. Not sure of the advantages of kitty litter over sand or gravel (I bought two bags of sand and one of gravel), except maybe that it is lighter, and what I probably need is heavier. Normally, I don't believe in stuff that operates like salt to melt snow (that is a Midwestern and east coast thing), but the valets yesterday dumped a bunch of it around my wheels, and a couple hours later, the pavement underneath was dry enough that I could just drive off.
_____________________
Kitty litter (calcium hydroxide) and typical "road salt" (calcium chloride) are different animals. Allen's answer is the environmentally friendlier one, in that it doesn't introduce chloride into the environment which is toxic to most plants and it persists. Free calcium is germane to both traction problem solutions and actually helps matters insofar as this is calcium's finest hour.
I bought lunch.
Post a Comment