The everyday map is the whole point of this page, so here it is street by street. In town: Elm Heights south of campus and Prospect Hill and the Near West Side west of the square, older neighborhoods of narrow limestone-curbed streets and deep porches; Bryan Park and the blocks around it; Green Acres east of campus; Sherwood Oaks and the south side out past Switchyard; the north side toward the State Road 45/46 Bypass; and the newer streets filling in the east and southeast edges of 47401 and 47408. Beyond the city the county takes over, and this is where a just-because order needs one extra field. Ellettsville in 47429, Unionville, Smithville, Stinesville, Harrodsburg, the roads around Lake Lemon and Monroe Lake, the limestone country running south toward Oolitic and Bedford, Gosport and Spencer northwest in Owen County: out there a mailbox can be a quarter mile from the house it belongs to, the numbers are not always on it, the lane is gravel, and a dog usually arrives before a person does. Give a phone number and one landmark — the second barn, the mailbox with the blue reflector, the turn after the bridge — and a rural just-because delivery becomes routine instead of a treasure hunt. Ask for a morning slot on those, because a rural route works better before the driver has spent the afternoon in town.
Who these actually go to, in the order we see them. Teachers, constantly: the MCCSC schools including Bloomington High School North and South and the middle schools all take deliveries at a main office rather than a classroom, so name the teacher and the school and expect an office hand-off at the end of a period — and send it on an ordinary Wednesday in February rather than the last week of May, when everyone else sends theirs. Coworkers and staff: Indiana University is the county's largest employer, so the routine thank-you here is a departmental drop in an academic building, where a department name is worth as much as a room number. Nursing units and clinic staff, which mostly works: most units accept flowers at a station, but keep it low-pollen and unscented, skip the food that many units cannot share, and address it to the unit rather than to a patient floor. New parents at home rather than at a hospital, which is the better version anyway. A grad student moving into a rental in August, when half of Bloomington changes addresses in a single week. And a neighbor, which in the older neighborhoods often means a house you can walk to — worth remembering that you can send flowers four streets away and it still counts.