If you have ever had an instructor teach this stretch, my way with supporting foot on the wall, please let me know, I am the only one I have ever seen do it

I mentioned a Piriformis Stretch last week.

To be honest, I have done that stretch in a lot of classes over the years. But I have never heard a name for it. I have just been queued for the moves.

This is a move that is used AFTER exercise to stretch butt and hip. REALLY EFFECTIVE.

Here I am in the traditional form.

And here I am, the way I do it, foot of the supporting leg on the wall. So, I have turned it into a supported pose.

And as I settle into the stretch, I slide that foot further down the wall, oh so gradually. Adds a whole new level to the stretch. I apply very gentle pressure with both hands.

Last week I discovered I don't have to wait for my new school year calendars

I use a desk blotter size calendar.

It is mounted on the front of my refrigerator.

It is a SCHOOL YEAR (July - Aug), not a traditional Jan - Dec calendar.

Last week I realized I had notes all over the last page of my current calendar, with late summer and fall dates.

I really wanted next year's calendar, but they are not yet available.

While digging through the stacks at Office Depot, I found this one -

It is a generic calendar. No dates written. It works for any month/year combination. It has the huge daily squares I love. It is desk blotter size. 

When I showed it to my husband, he said I would have to be SUPER careful to get the right numbers plugged in on all those months. True. Because of that I am actually writing in pencil.

My calendar does not have a crease on it, like the picture above, that is actually the front page which I dug out of the recycling bin, to take the picture, so you would have all the identifying information.

I don't know if these have always been available, or are new.

I am going back and buying several more, for future years, just in case. 

Because I love the idea of having the next years calendar as early as I wish, every year. And because I have a lot of Office Depot credit from turning in printer cartridges.

Do you know if any stations put Olympic footage together by sport and rerun it after the Olympics?

I have HOURS of ice skating recorded.

It is more hours than necessary because there are other events included in the same footage.

I don't know if I have it all.

My recorder is nearly full of just Olympics which is creating problems for me.

Youngest does not have time to watch recorded Olympics right now.

I would be very happy if there are olympic "collection" reruns, so youngest and I could watch only ice skating - the dancing, the individual, the team, the couples competitions later.

Do any of you happen to know if there are any event specific reruns that show after the close of the games?

Photo Albums CURRENT

I made a photo album label and went back in my archives and added it to old posts on this topic. So if you click on "Photo Album" at the bottom of this post, all the other/past posts will appear below this one. There are a lot of photo album related posts. It has been a continuing topic over the years.



I originally started with Century Photo. (I am not putting in a link because I do not want someone to half read this post and end up at their site.) For years, they had a quality product. Those are our old beloved albums. We have a lot of them.

Our albums are in four colors. Each kid has their own set and my husband and I have our shared set. Each owner has a different color for ease of identification. So I have prints made in sets of 4 and one picture goes in each album. Each kid has a full set of family pictures. There are also individual pictures in their albums. For example, middle has a lot of college pictures that are not in any of the other three albums.

I placed a last/final order several years ago with Century Photo and never received my stuff. Long story short - they declared bankruptcy, didn't fill a lot of orders. I filed complaint with state of California. They had lots of complaints but were not able to do anything. When they reopened, their products were made over seas and not of the same quality. I no longer order from them.

So, needing albums and having lost my supplier, I bought albums at Hobby Lobby and am NOT happy with them. The page holes, which fit into the three rings, break/split/crack EASILY. I don't think I have had one page (of my original album pages) ever split/break. And I have had at least a dozen of the Hobby Lobby ones break already. Those albums have been rejected.

The original manufacturing company (of my beloved albums) now Archival Photo Pages (made in the USA) was none too happy with Century Photo either. They decided to continue to make my beloved albums and to sell them directly to the public. They called me (as a previous customer of Century Photo) to let me know what had happened. To be honest, I waited a while to see if they got up and running. And then I placed an order with them.

Sarah your question on Sunday was most welcome because it made me open the shipping box and check out the quality of the product. (I ordered in November, thinking middle and I would work on photo albums over holidays, but I was not up to it post surgery at that time).

My husband and I think it is exactly the same (high) quality product that we used to order. The pages and albums look identical.

So, I am on their email list and will continue to order from them as we fill pages/albums.

NOTE: when you are on their site, the slip covers (holds two albums from what I can tell of the pictures) are sold separately. So $5.97 buys ONE album only.

Mehndi pictures

My books - black history month

Added later -

Race / Ethnicity	Number	Percentage of U.S. population
Americans	308,745,538	100.0 %
White	223,553,265	72.4 %
African American	38,929,319	12.6 %
Asian American	14,674,252	4.8 %
Native Americans or Alaska Native	2,932,248	0.9 %
Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander	540,013	0.2 %
Some other race	19,107,368	6.2 %
Two or more races	9,009,073	2.9 %

From Wiki






February is Black History month in the United States and Canada.

It is observed in October for the United Kingdom.

In 2012, I just happened to read several books with this theme ( Uncle Tom's Cabin, Cry, the Beloved Country, The Tales of Huckleberry Finn, and Out of Africa).  I commented it felt like it was a personal Black History month, except those books were stretched out over a couple months, not just February.

Last year, in February, I read Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) by Zora Neal Hurston.

I gathered other books from my various reading lists, with this theme, and kept them here, together for future February reads:
Native Son (1940) by Richard Wright.
The Jungle (1906) by Upton Sinclair.
The Color Purple (1982) by Alice Walker
Beloved (1987) by Toni Morrison.