I was lucky enough to actually BE in the arena watching our team at the 1980 Winter Olympics, and witness the games that team USA played to win that well deserved gold metal. What a heartwarming, heart-thumping, delirious moment it was when the bell sounded the finish of that game! It was the most moving sports event I've ever seen and now, nearly 30 years later, people in LP talk about how that one victory felt like it was for all of America! Lake Placid is my hometown, and those young athletes really gave us all a reason to be proud!

I don't care for it at all. This morning there was a report on Olympic security and our team has been told they should avoid wearing anything that identifies them as American when they leave the games' venues. Then they showed a photo of 8 models wearing the sweaters. I just can't image the image os seeing our entire Olympic team walking together in those sweaters - talk about a kaleidoscope!

A few years ago I was asking the same questions because I wanted the iridescent glass tile look but choked on the price. I found the price on the Oceanside Glasstile to be pretty uniform and picking it up at my local Expo was the cheapest when shipping was factored in. You might want to look at Maestromosaic.com. I bought some very pretty glass tile from them for a different application and they were cheaper than Oceanside, though none of it is as affordable as ceramic tile. Home Depot is now carrying glass tile too, but in small sheets or strips rather than a 1 sf sheet. Do you really need a full wall of this? Could you get by with a decorative band? How about mixing the occasional glass tile into a field of stone or ceramic mosaic of the same size? If you wouldn't mind a more irregular look, you can get tumbled "beach glass" that would be great for a broken tile effect, and many tile stores now sell glass "pebble" sheets, at about half the price of Oceanside. A little creativity can pay off in big savings. Something else to know about OG and some other glass mosaic tiles: if you are thinking of DIY'ing it, be prepared for a lot more work than you would do with a mesh-backed tile. The Glasstile is front-mounted onto brown paper which you are supposed to wash off after the tile is cemented in, but it has some annoying drawbacks. Most importantly, you can't see your tile, which means that if a tile is out of sync with its neighbors, you won't know it until after the tile is mortared in and you wash off the paper. Ditto if you have mortar oozing up too high through the grout joint or onto the tiles themselves. Vertical applications are especially challenging because, even when dry, the paper tends to collapse and not hold the tiles as evenly spaced as a mesh backer would do. Compound this by 10 if the paper gets wet - like, say, from wet mortar, or a wet sponge or rag you use to clean mortar mess off your tiles as you go along. To get satisfactory results with a vertical application, I'd suggest that you use a mortar mix that is on the dry side, use the shallowest-tooth trowel that you can find, and insert 1/16" spacers into the grout joint lines at fairly regular intervals to keep the little tiles lined up well. Good luck.

My oldest stepson just retired from the ARmy after 22 years, a Chief Warrant Officer 4, flying gunships. He drives a big macho truck plastered with stickers of crude, rude manly slogans. And smack dab in the middle of his back window is ... in bright pink ... Save the Ta Ta's ... which he displays in my honor. It made me cry! And then it made me laugh!