"Thatch" is an Odd Word

Some things are the same all over the world. And then, some things are not.

Erin went to the grocery store on Friday, as she does practically every day here. Actually she went twice because as she was making dinner she realized she did not have enough ketchup to make sauce for the meatloaf and had forgotten to get any on her earlier trip to the store. There is a store just around the corner, so while the meatloaf was still in the oven Erin left and then realized she really had no idea how much longer the meatloaf had before the timer went off. Quickly glancing at her watch she figured she probably had about 15 minutes. No problem. She sped up the pace, arrived at the store, grabbed some ketchup and chose a check-out line. Just like in the U.S., and assumably every other country in the world, Erin happened to choose the one line where the customer at the register had problems swiping her card in the machine. The cashier had the woman keep trying....and trying, and trying, and trying. Seriously, the woman tried to use her card to pay about 8 times before eventually giving up and pulling a wad of cash out of her wallet to complete her transaction. Of course, this only happens to Erin when she is in a hurry. Luckily, she got home just in time to walk into the kitchen and see the timer count down the last 3 seconds before she had to take the meatloaf out of the oven. No matter where you are, the experience of picking the longest check-out line with the most customer issues will invariably occur and is always frustrating.

Something you don't happen upon just anywhere is a building with a thatched roof. In fact, we drive the same route to church every Sunday and just this morning noticed an apartment building with a thatched roof. There aren't many, if any, of those around Amsterdam that we've noticed. John commented that he doesn't think he would probably want to live in an apartment building with a thatched roof. As he said, "If I was a rat, that's where I would live. I mean, it's like a built-in rat's nest." Hmm. He's got a point there.

Even though we don't have a thatched roof, we still have mice. We encountered another one, or maybe the same one, again last night. At least it's not a rat. And it's for sure not living in our thatched roof...since we don't have one.