Recently in Curling Category

What a fun weekend. On Saturday, we went to the La Maison Française at the French Embassy to see a Czech performer doing a show with bubbles. Yeah, the soap bubble kind. It was really cool, and Ellie and Evan LOVED it. I came home to catch up on the Michigan State game, and promptly scared the kids with my yelling at the TV. It would have been fine if the MSU receivers could have caught the freakin' ball a little more often! Still, a win is a win, and we're unbelievably 8-2 right now, with Purdue at home next, before the big game at Penn State on November 22. It's a pretty exciting time for MSU football, shockingly enough.
We finally decided on Saturday to pull up the old crappy carpet on the stairs, so that we could get rid of the drywall that's been sitting around forever. I pulled the carpet up on Saturday evening, and there were actually pretty nice hardwood stairs underneath! A little TLC, and they'll look really nice. On Sunday morning, I tore down the paneling on one side of the stairs, so I could drop the drywall in. The demolition was fun (Lisa remarked that she's glad I have protective eyewear: there were a lot of splinters flying around!). It was a little frustrating though, just because there always seem to be gotchas whenever we try to redo something around our house. But we ended up managing to get the drywall mostly in place before I had to leave for curling.
Yes, the curling season has begun. For most people, it even started a couple of weeks ago, but I scaled back my schedule, so I'm only playing on Sundays. My team jumped out to a 3-0 lead, then a 6-1 lead, before wrapping up the win at 12-2. It's Pizza League though, so I wouldn't say I played great, or read anything into the results. We could just as easily get killed next week. But it is fun, which is how I like it right now. And it was especially fun coming home and watching the Giants whip the Cowboys. Man, do they need Tony Romo back or what?
So, to the subject of this post. Our local Safeway has a gas station. They give you $0.10 per gallon off for every $100 you spend in the store, or $0.03 just for being a member. We apparently had been racking up the credits and had spent $400 in the past couple of weeks, so we got a $0.40 discount. Off the $2.44 price. So we paid $2.04 per gallon. Wow. We spent only $25 to fill up the tank of our Odyssey, just a few months after routinely paying double that. Crazy.

The weekend actually worked out fairly perfectly, all things considered. On Friday night, we had tickets to go to "Boo at the Zoo": trick-or-treating at the National Zoo. It was already pretty crowded by the time we got there, but the lines weren't all that long. Thankfully, there were a few monkeys awake for Evan to see (read: freak out about). And while the pandas were asleep, they are cute when asleep. Plus, we got a lot of candy. I don't think we need to go around to the neighborhood at this point.
It rained pretty much all day Saturday, which was okay because we had indoor activities planned for the most part. Unfortunately, Ellie also had to go to the doctor, but she seems to be perfectly fine now. It was her friend Claire's birthday party that day, so she had some fun playing there, and then we were off to the "Air and Scare" at the Udvar-Hazy Air and Space museum. Not as fun as the zoo, but way more crowded due to it being free (aside from parking). We were lucky to get there early, because by the time we left a little before 6pm, the line to get into the place was insanely long, almost 2 miles backed up onto the road to get in. And there was nowhere to park once you got in either. So lucky us for getting there early. After that, since it was still pouring rain, it seemed like a good night to head to an Irish pub for dinner. I had fish and chips and a Guinness, and they were good enough to put the MSU-UM game on the TV for me, so I got to see the fourth quarter and MSU close out a big win. Loved the look on Rich Rodriguez's face every time the Wolverines made another stupid play. Thankfully, the idiot replay official's call on the first U-M touchdown didn't cost us either.
Finally, yesterday was a beautiful fall day for another birthday party, which wrapped up just in time for us to head home and catch the Giants beat the Steelers. I was so worried that the Giants would dominate every statistic and yet find a way to lose thanks to two big plays by the Steelers, but they managed to do just enough to pull out the victory. It was a big win, as they are about to head into an absolutely brutal stretch of games to end the season.
This should be another busy week for us. The Town of Vienna's Halloween parade is on Wednesday, Halloween itself is on Friday. And curling starts on Sunday! Oh, and Guitar Hero is scheduled for delivery on Tuesday. Aw yeah.

Spring technically arrived last week, but the weather hasn't quite warmed up enough to convince me, even though all our flowers are blooming in the front yard, and the trees are starting to bud like crazy too. So it seems strange that I will still be curling in leagues for the next couple of weeks. And let me tell you: it can't end soon enough. At this point, I'm just going through the motions of it all and looking forward to having a break. Side note: the US women are 4-1 so far at the World Championships, though they have a long way to go yet, playing the top two teams (China?!?! and Canada) later today.
MSU's hoops team pulled off a mild upset beating Pitt this week. I think a lot of people had Pitt going far, based on their streak through the Big East tourney, but thanks to some help from the refs in letting a lot of the rough play go, we were able to advance. It should be interesting to see how much rough stuff we get away with against Memphis. If they let us be physical with the Tigers, we have a good chance, I think.
The hockey team starts its title defense as the three seed out West against Colorado College on Friday. Too bad it's on ESPNU and I won't be able to watch.
Random Amazon purchasing info and lust: Ellie has been getting toward the height limit of her Britax car seat, so we've been looking for a booster seat for her. The catch is that we still want her to be in a 5-point harness, and there aren't a lot of candidates out there, though the market is growing. Ellie's cousin has the "throne," the Britax Regent, which harnesses up to 80 pounds and runs a cool $250. We also looked at the Sunshine Kids Radian and some other more expensive models ($200+) But yesterday I found out about the new model from Graco, and we drove out to Burlington Coat Factory (more than great coats, they have a sub-store in there dubbed Baby Depot). The Nautilus costs $150 and has a high height limit harness, and a 65 pound weight limit. Ellie's still under 30 pounds, so we were more worried about the height than anything, so we had her sit in it and try it out. We thought she might not like it, since it's still very "car seat"-ish, but she actually did like it. Only problem was that they were out of stock, so Amazon to the rescue. Now we just have to wait for the super-saver shipping to arrive in a couple of weeks.
Lastly, Harmonix announced that Rock Band for Wii will be coming out in June. Woot! Maybe Ellie can play drums while I play guitar!

This morning, I went to submit our entry into the last bonspiel of the year, a fun get-together up in New Jersey that I've been wanting to play in for some time. We put a team together, and all I thought I had to do was get the entry in before March 15. Turns out, not so much. They already filled up their allotment of teams, so we got shut out of playing. Pretty much all I have to say about that is "Fuck!" Lisa had already booked a flight to Michigan for that weekend so that she wouldn't have to be stuck home alone with the kids all weekend, so now I have to figure out what the heck to do instead.
Needless to say, the rut just got deeper.

Thanks to the bazillions of people who have written to me about Rockstar Curling, the possible reality TV show that NBC is looking at airing. I knew about it long before the emails started rolling in, but I appreciate the notice anyway.
Now I see that the official website is up, and they are taking registrations for the tryouts. Here's the catch though, which you had to see coming if you read the articles at all: "IF SELECTED COULD YOU TAKE A LEAVE OF ABSENCE FROM YOUR CURRENT EMPLOYER TO PARTICIPATE IN THE TRAINING AND FILMING OF ROCKSTAR CURLING?" It's supposed to be a six-month training commitment, which is a long "leave of absence." I imagine that answering "No" to the above question would probably disqualify me, eh?
On a related note, the USA Curling National Championships are going on right now. I actually know half of Team Lin on the women's side, so I'll be cheering for them, even though their chances are probably slim against the tough competition.

It wasn't quite what we wanted, but we returned from Schenectady yesterday with a trophy.
After struggling through our first game on Thursday, we hoped to play better the following day. Instead, we faced a team from Schenectady and lost a tough game in large part due to the home ice advantage. We were missing shot by inches, and they were making theirs by the same margin. Still, even after being down by 8 after two ends, we had a shot at scoring 5 or 6 in the third end and still missed by an inch again, and we weren't able to recover. At least that team ended up in the championship finals, where they lost on their last shot when their rock took a bad turn, much like ours had against them. Poetic justice.
So we were relegated to playing in the tiny two sheet Albany club, which turned out to be great for us. The change of scenery took our minds off the previous loss, and we started to turn our game around. We won that game fairly easily and moved back to Schenectady on Saturday.
We controlled the first game Saturday by making sure that we scored multiple points with the hammer while forcing the other team to only one point when they scored. We really got it rolling on Saturday night and blew out a pretty decent team. That win ensured that, even though we wouldn't win it all, we would at least be playing in a final on Sunday.
A couple of weeks ago, we went to Connecticut to play. Our Sunday opponents were from that club, and we had even played against two of them before. They were a good bunch of guys, so we knew we were going to have fun. We were led out onto the ice by the piper, and it felt good to be playing a meaningful game on Sunday again. After the traditional Drambuie shot, we got the game started. We kept the game close, but after a bit of a lucky bounce on one of the opponent's shots, we found ourselves down by two point after 5 ends. Then we took a break for beer. We weren't necessarily supposed to do that, but since we knew the other guys and we were just having fun, we decided to take the same break that we had gotten when we played each other in Connecticut. We came back from the break and quickly scored 4 points to take a two point lead. We traded points for a while and were tied after 8 ends again. In the ninth end, we had an open draw shot to score two points, but we came up two inches short, and took a one point lead into the last end. We were in good position going into their skip's last shot, and he decided to throw a big takeout to try to blast our rock out and win the game. Unfortunately for them, he also blasted his own shot just too far, and they were only able to tie it up, forcing an extra end.
We absolutely controlled the extra end, quickly managing the get two rocks under cover while also leaving the middle of the ice wide open for a potential final shot. On our skip's first shot, it was our turn for a lucky break, as we just ticked off one rock but still made the shot. Their skip's final shot was too heavy, and we pulled out the win and took home the hardware.
It was a bittersweet victory for us since we had high expectations. But in the end, we held our heads high knowing that we were one of only 4 teams with one loss or less in a tournament with 40 teams, and knowing that we lost to a team that went all the way to the championship final before losing. We still think that if we had played any of those teams on neutral ice, we would have given them all they could handle. Alas, it was not to be, and my 5-and-under career has come to a close.

I meant to post this prior to the Super Bowl, but I'll go ahead and post it now anyway.

"You got no fear of the underdog, that's why you will not survive."

I'm off to Schenectady this afternoon for the big Dykes Bonspiel. 40 teams comprised of curlers with less than 5 years of experience. I think we have a really good chance of winning the whole thing, but I'm not going to get too cocky about it. I have no idea if you can follow any of the results online, but here's the Schenectady club's website anyway.

Last week, I was sore because I had just finished curling 7 games in 4 days, including 3 in one day. This week, I'm sore because I ran a measly 1.8 miles yesterday.
This weekend, I really just wanted to catch up on some sleep. I was dragging all week, and hoped to get an extra couple of hours in on the weekend. But, on Saturday, I was still up around the usual time. We took Ellie to ballet class, and I later went to Home Depot for doors and shelves. Of course, on the way home I was hit with the epiphany that even after thinking three times about which way the door needed to open, I still got the one that opened the wrong way. So instead, I put the shelves for our guest room closet together. That went pretty well, and now our Rubbermaid bins of Christmas stuff, baby clothes, etc, are much more neatly organized than before (and we don't have to unstack 5 to get to the bottom one).
On Sunday morning, I woke up around 7:30 and couldn't get myself back to sleep, so I decided to try out my nifty new GPS watch and go for a quick run. It wasn't terribly cold, nice weather for a run. I only averaged about an 8:24 pace, and the watch worked pretty well, though ironically, it doesn't actually tell time! Then it was back to Home Depot for the correct door and home to install it, while watching MSU beat the hell out of Michigan in college hoops. Despite all my best efforts to make sure everything was square and level, the door still ended up just off kilter by fractions of an inch. I think I was eventually able to shim around the door and get it to the point where I was okay with it, but it was just plain annoying.
My usual Sunday curling game went to an extra end, thanks to two good shots by me to tie it up in the last end, but we lost in the extra because I missed both of my shots badly. I need to work on my release, because I know that's where I'm having the problems.
All that leads me to this morning, where my shins are in agony, unexpectedly. It has to have been the running, though I wouldn't have thought less than 2 miles could have that effect. Most of the rest of me is fine, just those shins (or rather, the muscle running alongside the shin). I definitely should have just stayed in bed.

Since that last post rambled a bit, here's the short version.
We finished with a winning record, maybe should have even done better than we did, but we're still happy.
Go Giants!
I hate stupid kickers.

That was hard.
We went up to Connecticut this weekend to play in the Men's Club National Playdowns with modest goals. First was to get some experience playing together as a team. With 7 games in 4 days, we definitely accomplished that goal. Next was to win a game. We accomplished that in our first game. We were a bit fortunate in that the other team didn't start playing well until later in the tournament, but it was a win. The other two goals were to beat the other teams from our club and to finish with a winning record. We came out in our second game against the #1 seed and had them on the ropes, but let them off the hook. My memory of that bleary 8am game (the first of three that day) is fuzzy, but we had the lead all the way through, and I even had a shot in the final end that would have had us sitting pretty for the win, but we were overzealous on the sweeping and the shot went through and we lost. But we came back nicely that afternoon and had a lot of fun beating one of the Potomac teams. Unfortunately, we had to rush to eat dinner and get back on the ice for our 8pm game, which we lost in a close battle. Our opponent also had three games that day, but they were able to defeat their second opponent in only 6 ends instead of 10, so they had a good bit more rest, and that may have been the difference. We were just beat after a long Friday. Even so, we were sitting at 2-2, with two winnable games on Saturday.
We slept in a bit on Saturday morning and got to the club for our noon game. It was a tight one all the way down, but we were still down by two points in the 9th end, and we were in trouble. With our skip's first shot, we had a difficult shot called, but our opponent for some reason was talking quite loudly behind me that there was a better shot that we should be playing. I called down to my skip and we changed to that shot (the opposing skip even showed us the line to play it!), and even though he missed, it enabled us to score one point and make the game close. In the 10th end, we made some great shots and aggressively went for the steal of a point, which we made and forced an extra end. In the extra end, we had to do the same thing, and we did exactly that, playing our guards and getting our one rock buried behind, for the win.
After a thrilling victory, we again had a short time to grab some sustenance and get back on the ice for another game. Luckily, or so we thought, this game was against the team that hadn't won a game all tournament. So of course, we proceeded to play our worst game of the weekend, and they managed to force us to an extra end. I absolutely sucked the extra end, missing both of my shots, but we still had our rock in position to score our point. Then came the crucial decision for our team: with our rock still on the button, and the opposition with a rock sitting about 8 feet in front of it for a possible "run back," what do we do? I'm still not sure what the best shot would have been, but the shot we picked was probably the wrong one: the try to guard our middle rock. The idea with the last rock advantage when you only need to score one point is to keep the middle open for your last shot, and we effectively blocked that. Sure enough, the other skip made his run back, and the crowd at the club went wild. Since it was Saturday night, and we were the only teams left playing, it was probably the biggest crowd of the weekend. So that left us with a virtually identical run back shot of our own rock for the win. It was close the whole way down, but our sweepers managed to keep the shot straight when I yelled at them to sweep, and we made the shot for a thrilling win, guaranteeing ourselves a winning record.
In our last game at 8am on Sunday morning, we had the chance to play spoiler and prevent the other Potomac team from getting into a tiebreaker. It was a double knockout round robin, so even though one team was undefeated, the one loss team had to get a second loss to be knocked out. Unfortunately, they just outplayed us, and it was not to be. Still, we finished 4-3, a winning record, and also finished well above our 6th place seed, in third place. Our only losses were to the top two teams, and in that grueling third game on Friday. We were quite happy with our results, and we are definitely psyched up for the Dykes bonspiel in a couple of weeks.
I also have to mention that it was great having my family there to cheer me on. The couple of times when I might have gotten down on myself after a bad game, it was great to come off the ice and get a hug from the kids and mom. The kids were pretty good too, even if they didn't want to take naps to let Lisa have a rest. Lisa should definitely be nominated for sainthood for getting through the weekend with the two kids mostly by herself.
After our 8am game yesterday was over, we stopped by my grandparents' place in New York, since it was pretty much on the way home. We had a nice visit, and the kids charmed them like they had charmed the state of Connecticut all weekend long. Soon enough though, we were back on the road, with shockingly little traffic. We made it all the way into Maryland before Evan woke up hungry from his nap. Then we made it about 5 minutes from our house before he started getting cranky from being in his car seat so long.
We unpacked some of the stuff from the car, and I went downstairs to watch the big NFC Championship game. Luckily, I actually remembered to set the Tivo to record it, so I quickly caught up on the first half action. From what I saw, the Giants were dominating the game, except for one Favre to Driver 90 yard TD catch and run. Ridiculous how open he was and how that changes a game. Watching the second half live was a torment. McQuarters picks off Favre but fumbles it right back! Aargh! Tynes misses two field goals, including the game winner! Aaaaarrrrgh! I couldn't even watch the last field goal, but I was bouncing off the ceiling after it went through. The Super Bowl should be a lot of fun. I think the Giants' coaching staff has done a heck of a job getting them to this point, and I hope that they can come up with the game plan to keep the game close, with a chance to win at the end. Either way, our neighbors who usually host the Super Bowl party are big Giants fans, so I will be joined in glee or misery for the game.
So now it's back to reality. My sore muscles are already thanking me for not sweeping today. Work is quiet due to the federal holiday (that we don't get off but nearly everyone else does). And the busted dryer and dishwasher beckon me to call an electrician to take a look. Sigh. It was fun while it lasted.

It seems that after my web host upgraded PHP, it broke the piece of my code that imports my "blogroll" on the sidebar. I haven't been able to figure out what changed, but since it throws a lovely core dump every time someone hits the page, I had to take the blogroll off for now, at least until I can figure it out. I am sure it will not be missed at all.
After much procrastination, we finally got back together with our lawyer and signed our wills. And yesterday, we even paid him! It wasn't cheap, but it is good to know that we've taken care of it, so that things will be taken care of when we're gone.
No update on the dishwasher and dryer yet. Procrastinating on that until we have more time to deal with it. Yesterday we took our wet clothes over to a friend's house to dry them, and we've been hand washing dishes, which was therapeutic the first time, and annoying ever since.
We're headed up to Connecticut tonight for the Men's Club Playdowns. For curling, ya know. It's basically like the regional qualifier for the National Championship. If you want to follow along, you can check out the Nutmeg Curling Club's results page. It's a round robin tournament, so we play 7 games, one Thursday, 3 Friday, 2 Saturday, and one, with the possibility of more if we're in a tiebreaker, on Sunday. But honestly, we're just hoping to win a couple of games and get some valuable experience playing together as a team so that we can do well at the Dyke's bonspiel in February. And I'm hoping we're not in a tiebreaker so that we can make it back home in time to watch the Giants in the NFC conference championship game!

A couple of folks filmed us for a project last week. You can sorta see me at various points during the video. When the guy in the Orioles hat is sliding, you see my hand as I'm walking next to him. I'm also in the distance in a couple of shots, wearing long white sleeves with a green vest. Way, way off in the background.
Anyway, it's worth watching if you're interested, if only to hear Fred yelling at the beginning. He's loud.

I should probably mention that our baseball season is over. We went from first to worst, what a debacle. In our last game, I was the only player with 2 hits, as we managed only 5 overall. I caught, played short and left and did okay. I even threw out a guy at second base, though he probably was safe. The throw beat him and he didn't slide, so I think the ump called him out for spite. I finished the season with a .360 average, which is good considering how badly I started out, but bad considering how I should have killed the pitching we were up against. Still, it was enough for third best on our team. Now the long wait until March or April.
Luckily, that wait will be plenty filled by curling. In my first "Pizza League" game on Sunday, I was making shots all over the place and we won pretty easily. In contrast, in our Monday night game, I had to skip again since our usual guy was out, and I couldn't make anything. Everything I threw was missing by either a lot, or just fractions of an inch, and it really drove me nuts. But that's curling for you, and there's always next week.

We played fairly inconsistent over the last two games on Saturday. In our first game, thanks to a pretty bad miss on my part, we gave up four points in one end, but stayed tough, scoring three back in the next end, and eventually coming back and holding on for the win. In our second game, I had a bad shot that cost us a bit, but we had a chance to tie in the 7th end, but our skip came up short of the house on his last shot and we only scored one point. In the 8th end, we came out and frustrated the other skip. We played three perfect shots in a row, drawing right down to the middle, where the other team could not get us out, behind protection from a guard. They finally got rid of the guard, but our skip missed the chance to put it back up pretty badly. They took advantage and cleared us out, but we still had a chance for a miracle shot. Our skip threw it darned near perfectly, but we just barely nicked a rock and spun away harmlessly, putting us down to defeat. We still stuck together and played pretty well, though inconsistently, even if we didn't end up with anything to show for it.
My baseball team, on the other hand, was a complete debacle. While we somehow managed to scrape by for the first 6 innings to stay within 5-4, the floodgates opened in the 7th inning through a combination of the opposition's good hitting and bumbling errors on our part (myself included, as I threw away a bunt attempt by our first baseman). We just haven't had our regular lineup available most of the season, and we've paid for it. Unfortunately, I have to miss next week's game, which will probably put our team in a bigger hole, as we are playing the "play-in" game for the playoffs.
The Indians suck. That is all about that.
The Giants are sneaking up on Dallas. They (knock on wood) could be 6-2 after playing Miami in London this week, going into their bye week followed by a rematch against Dallas.
The Spartans were lucky they didn't get their butts handed to them worse than they did. Unable to run the ball, and unable to stop Ohio State's run, they were fortunate to time all-out blitzes on OSU's QB to stay close in a game they had no business winning. They still have to win two games against Iowa, Michigan, Purdue and Penn State to have a chance at a bowl game.

We won our first curling game of the season last night. I think the final score ended up being 9-6, but it wasn't that close. We played well, and the other team was a little off, which helped us to the win. Today's game will be harder, as we're playing a team we know, and they will not go down easily. I played pretty well for my first game in a long time. I only flat out missed two shots, though I was off on a few others. In short, it was a good start, and hopefully we can keep it up today. I'm counting the hours until I can leave work and get back out there.

I've got my first bonspiel of the year starting tomorrow night at 8pm. We're Team Sethi, if you want to follow along. No live webcams or live scoring though. Regardless of whether we win our first game, we'll also be playing on Friday at 3pm also.

The curling season is just around the corner, and with this being my last year in the five-and-under category, I'm focused on getting myself ready for a run at the Dykes championship. As many people already know, being in baseball shape is very different than being in any other kind of shape. You don't usually have to do much in baseball other than sprint for 270 feet at the most, and it doesn't take much to be in baseball shape (see: John Kruk). The first bonspiel of the season is about a month away, so I decided that it's about time I started getting in shape. Unfortunately for me, I caught a cold from my snotty nosed kids, so running is out for a few more days till I get over it. But this morning while waiting for my oatmeal to cook, I did a quick set of 20 pushups and 50 situps. The pushups weren't too bad, but I've never had such a bad time doing situps. Talk about feeling the burn! I was barely able to get myself to stand up. Clearly, I have work to do before I'm ready to sweep a bunch of rocks down the ice all day.

I'm going to be a tired boy on Sunday Monday.
I woke up early yesterday so that I could leave work early and go with Lisa and the kids to have Easter pictures taken. That boy of ours takes some damn cute pictures. Ellie was acting a little shy, but still cute. Relatives can expect their copies after we pick them up at the beginning of April, but trust me, super cute.
This morning I got up fairly early again to make the drive up to the curling club, where I was subbing for a team whose members wouldn't be arriving until later today. We got down early 2-0 after two ends, but we figured out the ice and played well the rest of the way, taking an 11-3 win. We had lots of fun, and I am looking forward to playing more next year.
Unfortunately, when I walked out it was beautiful: 70 degrees and sunny. It has since clouded over a little bit, but I am second guessing my decision to come in to work at all today.
Tomorrow we have to get up early for the third straight day to make it downtown before they start closing roads for the National Marathon. We're running in an unrelated 5K at 8:30am, but we need to make sure we can get a decent spot because Ellie has a class at the zoo at 10am. Did I mention you can still make a direct donation for colon cancer research any time? Lisa's brother is doing well, by the way. They made him walk around the day after the surgery, which he said was a big help since it got the air pockets cleared out of his belly area. I'm not sure what he's eating at this point, but I know they were taking it slow and just making sure he had plenty of fluids. Thanks for all the kind words, he's glad to know people are thinking of him.
Finally, on Sunday, we have our version of Spring Training for baseball, a two hour "workout," which is essentially a meet-and-greet/make sure the new guys can throw and catch. Plus, I get to pick up my nifty new uniform. Good times. There's a rumor going around that since the age limit for pitching in this league is 32, I will be pressed into service in that regard. Guess I'd better work on my gyroball!

So Jerry Reese must have been listening to me, as the Giants traded Tim Carter for Reuben Droughns on Friday. Not a bad deal, considering that Tim Carter isn't exactly the next Jerry Rice, and Reuben has had some decent seasons. One less thing they need to acquire in the draft as well.
I want to be the first to apologize to those NCAA teams who feel snubbed this morning. I feel some responsibility, as waaaaaay too many Big Ten teams made it in this year. Since MSU finished 7th in conference play, but had a good resume otherwise, I think the committee let in Illinois and Purdue in part to justify MSU. Silly though. Illinois at least probably should not have made it. Early tip: take Niagara from the MAAC in the play-in game.
Last night, I curled for the first time in nearly a year. I'm taking the year off to maintain my "eligibility" for the five-and-under events, but I'm allowed to play in up to 9 games. I figured I should at least play in one. It was fun, but I am definitely sore this morning. Surprisingly, it's more in my legs (from pushing out in the delivery, and walking on ice) than my arms (from sweeping). I made some good shots, but was pretty inconsistent, which was to be expected. It was good to see a lot of the people from the club, and there were a lot of new faces who joined after the Olympics. I'm definitely looking forward to a full year next year.

In a recent interview with the Indianapolis Star, Jonathan Frakes was asked what he is passionate about. His response?

"I'm always reading. I'm on a curling team. I go bass fishing as much as possible. I like to take the dogs into the woods. And we travel as much as possible." Frakes also owns a home furnishings store with his wife; teaches film directing at a multi-arts center (his students include a teenager, the local gynecologist, TV producers and a 70-year-old); and plays the trombone (he's featured on the Phish album "Hoist," in the song titled "Riker's Mailbox").

Apparently, he lives in Maine, so that makes more sense than curling in LA.
I miss curling. I'm taking the year off, and I miss it. It would be my fifth full year of curling, and since I wouldn't be able to travel because of the new baby, I decided to take the year off to preserve my "eligibility." The northeast curling association (the GNCC) has special bonspiels (tournaments) for people who have been curling for less than five years. They are held in various clubs throughout the northeast (Maine down to Maryland), this year being in Rochester, NY and Wayland, MA, both too far to travel to with a 3 month old. So in order to give it one last shot, I will wait until next year to curl. It looks like one of the bonspiels might be held in Cape Cod, so that could be a lot of fun. And now you know why I haven't been writing anything about curling this year.

We had one last game of curling, after a two week layoff, for third place in our Sunday league. We just missed out on playing in the championship game because of tiebreakers. Bummer.
We started this game off with a quick two points, but then immediately gave up three because I missed a shot pretty badly. But in the next end, we put up a huge 5 points on the board and cruised home from there. We had an 8 point lead going into the sixth end, and even though we gave up five points (again, thanks to some bad shots by me), that was all we had time for, and we took third place. The one disappointing thing about yesterday was that it was the last day of curling, which traditionally means "drink all the beer we have left." But the only beer they had left was Budweiser. Ugh, I just couldn't do it. I did get to talk to a guy who goes to Ireland every year and brings back something new for his bar. He's sending me pictures so that I can get more inspiration for my own bar!
I had a lot of fun playing with my team, who played great even though we were missing our fourth player the whole time. I'm definitely looking forward to next year already.

It's been a busy couple of days, so I'll do my best to summarize quickly, since there's a lot to do today too.
I got in 80 swings at the batting cages in Laurel before curling on Monday. I didn't have the guts to go into the "very fast" cage, so I was stuck with the medium. Whatever happened to just regular fast? Anyway, after whiffing on the first 10 or so pitches, I finally realized that I was swinging under the ball and worked on swinging down. By the time I got to my third set of twenty, I was drilling the ball pretty well. It was definitely a good idea to get out there and work on it. We'll see if it pays off Saturday morning.
Curling was rough Monday night. We didn't do horribly, but we didn't have our best game either. We just missed shots at bad times, and it cost us. The frustrating part was that I think that as sweepers we are usually able to save a couple of shots each game, but this time we couldn't even do that. So we lost in the semis, and the Monday league is over. One last game on Sunday, April 23, and I'll be all done.
It's a lot easier to get up to run at 8am than it is to get up to run at 6am. Especially when you know you're going to be going to the Nats opening day later that day. I ran about 3 miles, and I'm feeling sore, especially after the game.
We left the house around 10:30, and there were already a lot of fans on the train. We arrived at the stadium just before 11:30, and I carried Ellie to the ticket booth to see what was left. Not a problem at all, we got seats in left-center. At one point, Alfonso Soriano dove for a ball right in front of us (missed it), and we saw his homerun bounce off the facade just to our right (the only Nats run of the game).
Now, the important stuff. I wasn't picky about where we were sitting, figuring it wouldn't be that far to my favorite beer stand in 552. We were in 538, so that wasn't far at all. Until I arrived at 552, to find Heineken and Dos Equis. What the hell is going on??? Where's my good microbrew??? Lisa said she heard the brewery went under so they weren't selling it any more. I was now on a mission to find something other than Miller, Anheuser-Busch or Coors. My search was rewarded when I went down to the good seats behind home plate and found Red Hook. Not my favorite, but they had a variety: IPA, Nut Brown, and something else. Then, I turned around to look toward the field, and nirvana appeared: a Guinness stand! Oh glorious day, they have Guinness! I quickly got in line, and paid my $6.50 and enjoyed the rich taste and licked the foam off my lips. Later on, the line was longer, but well worth it.
Ellie had a great time once the big booming announcer voice had finished the pregame stuff. It was unusually loud, I thought. Placido Domingo sang the national anthem. Frickin' awesome. He founded the Washington Opera, which I think finally has its oen opera house now. Amazing voice on that guy. Dick Cheney threw the first pitch to loud boos, which got louder after he drilled his pitch into the ground. I think I got a good picture of the security perched around the roof, hopefully that was legal of me to do. They also had a gigantic US flag for the anthem, and fireworks for the players, which got Ellie perked up. But she really got excited when we broke out the peanuts. The kid is lucky she's not allergic, she's a peanut fiend. Her mouth was making peanut butter like there was no tomorrow. To her, the baseball game is a place where you get to eat hot dogs, big pretzels, peanuts, and that Dippin Dots ice cream. There was a game going on? She had no clue.
A great day for a game. As the guy next to me on the Metro said, it was such a nice day, in the words of Ernie Banks, "Let's play two!" But baseball doesn't do that any more, so we settled for one. The Nats lost pretty bad, to Floyd Bannister's son, and they'll definitely have to start hitting soon.
One more thing for you Mets fans: Game 6 from 1986. The 10th inning, recreated on RBI Baseball, the Nintendo classic, with Vin Scully announcing. It doesn't get any better.

The Yankees got off to a quick start against the A's the other night, and by the time I got home from curling to watch the game, it was already 13-1. Naturally, with Mike Mussina pitching last night, they only managed to score 3 runs, and lost 4-3. Moose never gets the run support, I just can't figure it out.
The Nats had a tough loss against the Mets. Paul LoDuca dropped the ball as Alfonso Soriano slid into home, but the umpire was completely screened on the play and called Soriano out. A tough loss for the Nats, 3-2.
Switching gears, the United States men's curling team is currently 6-1 and atop the leaderboard at the World Championships. They've got 4 games left in the round robin, and are in good position to make the playoff round. If they finish in the top two, they will be guaranteed a medal, thanks to the Page Playoff system. Not a bad year for those guys.
Congrats to the Maryland women's basketball team! They came back from a 13 point deficit to defeat Duke to win the National Championship. I actually watched a lot of the game, and it was 10 times more exciting than the men's final.

Daylight Savings Time kicked my butt yesterday. I actually went to bed about an hour early, knowing I had to get up early for my baseball game, but it still didn't help. Around 3pm, I crashed hard, and thankfully my saint of a wife kept Ellie away and let me sleep for about an hour.
I woke up in the morning around 6:30. Our game wasn't until 8:30, but it was way down in Lorton, and I had no idea how long it was going to take me to get there. I left the house around 7:15, and arrived at the field at 7:45. Guess it didn't take that long, not much traffic at 7:30 on a Sunday morning.
The first guy from our team that I met was Vincent. Really nice guy, he said that our coach, Ron, convinced him to play, even though he hadn't played since the seventh grade. We warmed up together, and the rest of the team started trickling in. Amazingly, I think I actually learned almost everybody's name, even though I am horrible about that kind of thing.
We were the visiting team, so we were up first, and Cap'n Ron slotted me into the #2 spot. Right into the fire, no problem. Our leadoff hitter drew a walk, and I came up next. I took a pitch to let the leadoff guy steal, and it was ball one. 3 straight balls later, and I was trotting to first. We pulled a double steal shortly afterward, and then another couple of walks later, and I was forced in. It was going to be a long day for the opposing pitchers. I think they used 4 or 5 guys in the first three innings alone. I ended up going 1 for 3 with 2 walks. My lone hit was a first-pitch-swinging duck snort into left field. I also popped up to the pitcher, who dropped it for an error, and struck out on a pitch that I thought was about 2 inches off the ground. At that point, the game was out of hand anyway, and I think the umpire just wanted to move it along. Not much action for our outfielders yesterday, our pitchers did pretty well, and their hitters had a hard time getting into any groove, with 18 players in their lineup. The most action I saw were dribbling seeing-eye grounders that I just picked up and threw back in. Some of our hitters had some nice shots though. Two inside-the-park homers (more on that later), and a couple of triples that were close to being homers. We should do well if we can get runners on base for the big guys. I never felt intimidated by the pitching like I did in my previous adult baseball stint (those guys were right out of playing in college, and burning the fastballs by me). I expect I will face better pitching during the season, but it felt good to get in there and not feel overmatched. I was a bit tentative in my swings, with the best one the duck snort where I went up aggressive and going after the first pitch, but not bad for my first time out. I will have to get some cuts in at the batting cages sometime this week, just to get more practice in.
The field was crazy. First off, I should mention that Lorton is the site of the old prison (some good pictures in that PDF to give you an idea of what it was like). They closed it down a couple of years ago, and it's now being made over into some expensive subdivisions and a lot of parkland, a golf course, and ball fields. The field we played at, though, was the actual prison's field. Three layers of fencing surrounding it. Watchtowers overlooking the action. Barbed wire, floodlights, everything. Definitely the most interesting field I've played on since my days of the European Little League championships playing at the Wiesbaden, Germany Army base. The field itself was crazy too: 390 feet down the left field line, 430 to center, and 370 to right. Our guys roped some balls out there, that would have been out of any other park, but in this field, they took a few hops to even reach the fence. The opposing team had to relay twice just to get the ball back to the infield. Crazy, but fun.
Even crazier was the feeling of taking to the ice later that day for curling. 3-4 hours in the sun playing baseball in the morning, and then 2 hours out on the ice in the evening, you can't get a more diverse day than that. By the time I got out on the ice, I was definitely feeling the soreness from baseball. For some reason, my knees were hurting a lot, maybe from when I was crouched as a catcher warming up one of our pitchers. Naturally, delivering the curling stone involves bending the knees a lot, so that wasn't happy. We were playing against a stacked team of subs, with two of our club's more experienced members playing on the other team. It was a really close game all the way, and I surprised myself by making some really tough shots. I had to make a tight hit and roll through a narrow hole in the second end, which allowed us to steal one point instead of the opposing team scoring three points. We nibbled away at them all game, scoring single points the first three ends, allowing them to score three when I missed two tight takeouts in the fourth end, then scoring single points again in the next three ends. Up by three in the final end, I almost gave the game away by failing to keep the house clean, but eventually threw two very good guards leaving them without a shot on their last rock, and we escaped with a two point win. Our team played great, and my sweepers are getting better and better at judging the weight, and with me making shots when I needed to, we are pretty strong.
It was a long game, and we didn't get home until after 10pm. Ellie had a hard time falling asleep (to her, it was "only" 9:30pm), but apparently slept until 10:30 this morning. I got her to bed, and had to ice my knees for the first time I can remember. They were hurting bad, but the ice and ibuprofen helped, and they're feeling much better this morning. I think about the only parts of me that are actually sore are my hamstrings. Unfortunately, I get to repeat the ordeal again this Sunday, as our baseball team has another 8am game, with curling later that day, but at least I won't be losing an hour of sleep this time.

For those playing at home, the capital of Burkina Faso is Ouagadougou. It's just fun to say "wa-ga-doo-goo." It's like my daughter came up with the name.
The more I think about this Alfonso Soriano situation, the more it ticks me off. I don't know why he thinks he is more valuable as a second baseman than a left fielder. By now, every team in the majors realizes he is a defensive liability at second base, so they probably all want him to try left field. As I said before, the Dominican Republic team certainly thought so, putting Placido Domingo Polanco at second instead of Soriano. When I was a kid playing Pony League (for those just older than Little League), I had played second base all my life. My coaches were two college kids who realized that they had too many infielders, so they converted me to center field. I was probably a 60 pound weakling at the time, and the furthest I threw the ball was from second base to first. But since they were college kids, we practiced almost every day, and they built up my arm strength, and used my speed to cover a lot of ground out there. It was a great move for me and the team, and if I remember right, we came in second in the league that year. For the rest of my youth baseball career (and subsequent softball playing, and starting this weekend, old-fogey league playing), I played the outfield. More than once, the opposing coaches saw the diminutive center fielder out there and thought they could beat my throw, and more often than not, their runners were gunned at the plate. If a little 13-year-old kid could do it, a professional baseball player getting paid $10 million a year could certainly do it too.
We had a good night of curling last night. After some rearranging of teams due to a lack of players showing up, we played with three guys on our team, meaning I would throw three rocks, and then have to sweep by myself for the remaining five. I think I actually had one of my better games, both throwing and calling weight when sweeping. We jumped out to a big lead and held on to win in the end.
Our club is being represented at the Mixed National Championships by my skip from last year, Scott Edie, and three other Potomac players. Right now, they are 4-0 and on top of the standings. They play the defending champions from Washington today at 4pm Eastern time. Washington is also 4-0 right now.
The US women's team skipped by Debbie McCormick (not Cassie Johnson, who was in the Olympics) is 4-1 at the World Championships, with their only loss being to Sweden, the defending World and Olympic champions.
Lastly, the Manhattan College Jaspers ran out of gas against Old Dominion and lost a close game in the NIT tournament.

I'm so tired. On Saturday, well over 500 people came through the Potomac Curling Club for our open house. I was there from 12:30-4:30pm, and there were people there before I arrived, and people there after I left (Ellie was getting a bit cranky, so we had to leave early). Sunday morning, another 450 people went through. All told, 1200+ people went through our three open house dates. Insane what a little bronze medal and some TV exposure will do for you.

Lots of pictures in the photo gallery. Here's the peak of the line outside at 2pm on Saturday:

The line inside was just as bad.

The initial reports are in from the Potomac Curling Club's first Olympic Open House last night. On a Thursday night, the people started showing up an hour before the prescribed start time of 7pm and the last went through about an hour after the end time of 9pm. About 250 people in all went through. Previous experience with these things says that Thursday night will usually account for about 15-20% of total attendance, so we're looking at over 1000 people easily. I'm starting to rethink whether I really want to volunteer for our open house tomorrow. It's going to be nuts. Saturday from 1-4pm with 400 people is starting to sound like a minimum.
The best part is that we requested, but didn't require, a $5 donation to cover our costs, and almost everyone agreed to chip in and pay, so we raised $800 last night alone. Now we just need to focus on getting even just a small percentage of the people who showed up to convert to full membership. Very good news for our club.

The US men took on Great Britain in the curling bronze medal game this morning. Click below to read the spoiler results.

The US Men's curling team sure picked a bad time to each have their worst game. Really, every one of them had his worst game in the semifinal matchup against Canada yesterday. Most particularly, not to pick on him or anything, Shawn Rojeski, who had been bailing the team out of several predicaments in previous games, had a horrible game. When he hogged (didn't get his rock over the second hog line) his rock, the US was pretty much done for. Canada just had them on the run the entire game, very similar to their first game. Every time Canada had the hammer, the US would just miss a shot and the Canadians would throw the perfect shot to get two. When the US had the hammer, the Canadians would throw great shots and force the US to scramble just to get their one point. Much credit to Pete Fenson for managing to get that point every time and keep Canada from stealing, but he was just in tough situations all game long. Hopefully the guys will play better on Friday, when they compete for the bronze! Any medal is a huge accomplishment for US curling. Our club is having open houses this weekend, and we've got a ton of people coming (I think I am personally responsible for getting about 15-20 people in there). I can't imagine what would happen if they actually win a medal.

Ready for yet another curling post? Good.
You know you've made it to the big time when Google does a logo of curling.

NPR also did a story on the post-Olympic curling boom (that's how I got into it after the last Olympics), featuring several members of our club. The audio is online so you can listen.

The Washington Post ran a big article in today's Sports section on Joel "mit der mullet" Retornaz and the new Italian fascination with curling.

Finally, it seems even our Texan President is a curling fan. Go figure.

USA vs. Canada. Semifinals, tomorrow at 5pm on CNBC. Don't miss it.

Congrats to the US men's curling team! They've clinched a spot in the medal round with an exciting 9-8 win over first place Great Britain. They're up against Canada right now. Canada needs to win to get into the medal round, if they lose, they must play tiebreakers with Norway and Switzerland.
The Cinderella story of the Games, the Italian curling team, flamed out this morning with a 10-2 loss to the Swiss. Joel Retornaz is still my hero.
The US women let another one get away from them. Another couple of poorly timed misses allowed the Swiss to score 3 in the 10th end to win by one point. They can still play spoiler by beating defending Olympic champs Great Britain later today.
My Sunday league team won yesterday. We built up a 4 point lead, only to have it evaporate in a single end, tying the game after 6 ends (we play 8 ends in league play, not 10 like the Olympics). However, I managed to figure out the swingy ice and scored a big four points in the 7th to win going away. Side note: we definitely need the money we get from having groups rent our ice, but dang, they really left a lot of crud on the ice. It seemed like the rocks were really digging in and turning more than usual.
I won a highly coveted LA Times Olympic pin from the Washington Post's Olympic blogger last week by correctly adding the Swedish women's hockey goalkeeper's age (19) and saves against the US team (37).
Pete Fenson just stole another point from the Canadians, who were shocked by my man Joel and the Italians over the weekend, and have a slim 3-2 lead going into the eighth end.
Update: Looks like the game went about the same way it was going when I left this morning. The US was trying their darnedest to keep all Canadian rocks out of play, but they just missed a couple of shots by fractions, allowing the Canadians to eventually take the game 6-3. In an odd twist, the two teams will face each other again in the medal round on Wednesday. Finland plays Great Britain in the other semifinal. The US has a great shot at a medal, having lost to Finland by fractions of an inch on the last shot, beating Great Britain, and losing to Canada in a hard fought game that was closer than the final 6-3 score would indicate.

OK, so they didn't show any of the Italian squad on CNBC tonight, but that was a nice performance by the Americans, wasn't it? Almost let it get away in the tenth when Pete Fenson's hard shot veered suddenly off course (much like Cassie Johnson's the night before), but caught just enough of the Swiss rock to knock it away harmlessly.
So, since you didn't get to see Joel Retornaz' mullet on TV, here's a picture.

And here's the New Zealanders' tribute to the do:

With their surprising 3-3 record and a look like that, it's easy to see why Italy has gone crazy over curling.
And as a bonus for the guys, Russian women's skip Ludmila Privivkova (click on the picture below for another better shot). As far as I know, she does not appear in the nude curling calendar. (NSFW)

Maybe our women's curling team would be doing better if they had starred in an awesome metal video like this one from Hammerfall, featuring the Swedish women's curling team.
In related news, the US men finally broke the CNBC 5pm curse and took down Switzerland. It'll definitely be worth watching tonight, especially if they show the extra end thriller between bottom-feeders Italy and New Zealand. Ya gotta love the stylin mullet on the Italian skip.

It seems the US women dropped another heartbreaker, this time to Russia. They tied it up in the tenth to force another extra end, but lost it after that.
There's apparently some controversy too. Someone mentioned that the US may have had a chance to get four points and win the game in the tenth, but ran out of time! (they have a 73 minute shot clock, with two timeouts, and all shots must be delivered within that time) Also, the USA network, which I praised this morning for showing a non-US curling match, cut away from the curling BEFORE the extra end. Why? To show the women's hockey PREGAME! Absolutely horrible. Can you imagine them cutting away from Bode Miller's skiing for that?
The men will try to keep pace and break the 5pm CNBC curse later on against Switzerland.
Our local NBC affiliate was out at our club for a broadcast the other day. The result is a pretty damned funny video. Check it out, if only for the reporter's attire.

It's not looking good for the US women. They had an awful break of bad luck against Sweden last night. Cassie Johnson was trying to just draw her rock in for one point and the game. She had a good opening to get into, but nearly as soon as she let go of her shot, it picked (some debris or frosty ice caused the rock to suddenly change direction) and was way off target. To the sweepers' credit, they tried for a Plan B shot, to hit a Swedish rock in the house and roll in a bit, but it just wasn't going to happen. I've heard from some sources in Torino that the carpet you see alongside the sheets of ice is brand new, and may be shedding and getting onto the ice. It's happened more than a few times, which is just plain unfortunate. They're now just 1-4, and are having a tough time against Russia right now.
The men are in better shape after knocking off Sweden themselves. After tying the score in the 8th end, Pete Fenson made a fantastic double takeout in the ninth to get out of trouble. He left himself sitting with four rocks in the house, and forced Peja Lindholm to try to draw for a single point. Lindholm was narrow and the US stole two big points. Another great double in the tenth forced Sweden to concede. The US men are now 3-2, tied for third place with Finland and their opponent this afternoon, Switzerland. They have games against Germany, as well as tournament co-leaders Great Britain and Canada remaining.

First of all, it's unbelievable that the USA men's curling team lost to freakin Italy yesterday. They just played a bad game at the wrong time. Much like the women's game, it was not the last shots that made the difference. I think the game was largely lost in the 6th end. The US had set up to force Italy to draw for a single point with the hammer. Pete Fenson just got a little too cute on his takeout attempt, and wanted to roll behind cover for a possible steal of a point. Instead, he completely missed the takeout, and Italy had a simple draw for two points. Later on, in the ninth end, he overthrew another simple takeout and gave the Italians a steal of one point, and a two point lead going into the last end. It looks like they are playing well right now against Sweden, up two going into the final end, but Sweden has the hammer. Update: The men pulled it out against Sweden, and are now tied with them for third place at 3-2. Canada and Great Britain are tied for first at 4-1. The top four teams advance to the medal round. The women have their own big game against Sweden later today.
Our curling club has leagues on pretty much every day of the week. Sometimes, people can't make a particular day, and need a sub. Each league has sub lists, people who can't do the league every week, but are available to sub on occasion. And yet, the people needing subs end up sending emails to the entire club pleading for a sub. Lately, it's gotten really bad, with about 10-20 requests in the last two days. Finally it got too much, and I sent a note out reminding people of why we have sub lists. It was a little cranky, but I'm just practicing for my grumpy old man routine. I've now gotten four different people writing me back and saying thanks for sending the email. It seems our club has more than a few grumpy folks. Good to know I'm not alone.

The US Women's curling team just lost to Japan. To the best of my knowledge, Japan is not one of the stronger teams. In last year's World Championships, they were 3-8, finishing 9th out of 12 teams. The US won the silver in that event. I'll try to update this with more information once I'm able to actually watch the game, but the US had the hammer in the 10th end, down by one point, and were only able to score one. In the extra end, they left Japan with just a simple draw to the rings to win the game. Absolutely horrible. They're all but eliminated now, after just two days of competition. The top 4 teams advance to the medal round, and 3 losses is the absolute limit of what I think will qualify for the medal round. They might sneak their way into a playoff with 4 losses, but they are flirting with danger with Russia, Sweden and Great Britain still to come.
The expectations for the girls were high, but to come crashing down like this was completely unexpected.

Surprisingly (to me anyway), the US men are the ones who were 1-1 after the first day, while the women played very poorly and lost to Norway. I think the main difference between the men and women is the weight that the men are able to throw. The way the ice is set up right now is fast and straight, which means that the men, with their big takeout weight, can move a lot of rocks and get themselves out of trouble more easily than the women. The ladies were having a lot of trouble. It seemed like every time they needed to get a rock by a guard, they swept too late and crashed. Then they would give themselves more room by taking more ice (putting the target broom further out), and leave themselves in the open. In all fairness, the ice is tricky, and not curling a huge amount, making it hard to get behind cover. (More on the "controversial" ice from Reuters) But they've had two games to figure it out, and I'm not sure that they have.
This morning, the women lost big time to Canada. Those curling nuts (not me) who were crazy enough to get up at 3am to watch it live were able to go right back to sleep as Canada scored 5 points in the first end, effectively ending the game right away. The men bounced back with a comfortable win against New Zealand (yes, New Zealand has a curling team, three Canadians of NZ descent, and one born in NZ), putting them in good shape at 2-1. The women will try to bounce back later today against Japan, which should be an easier game, hopefully, while the men have a bye tomorrow before taking on host country Italy. The Italian men, who were only in the Olympics thanks to being the hosts, pulled off a fairly big upset today, stealing points in the 10th end, and the extra end to beat Germany. Germany isn't a powerhouse, but Italy just put together a team for the Olympics and have never competed on this level before, so it's huge for them to get a win at all. Congrats to them.

The pictures from this weekend's bonspiel are up in our club's photo gallery. I like this one myself:

For some reason, the pictures of all of us in a line ended up with a double version of me in all of them.

There is a good one of Ellie though:

She was having fun playing cars with the other skip's son.

I really hate when the Olympics are in other countries. Hell, it's not even that great when it's in our own country, because NBC will still hold the hot daytime events for the primetime telecast. Hence my complaint. We get a limited number of TV stations at work, including the local NBC, and CNBC and MSNBC, but not USA, and no TVs really within earshot of my cube. And what channel is curling on? USA, which we don't get at all.
Thankfully, I have multiple Tivos at home, so I can watch the day's worth of curling at some point after work, or in the morning (I watched the 3am men's game while eating breakfast this morning, way to go Pete!). But why should I have to? The BBC is simulcasting five television feeds (UK residents only), and NBCOlympics.com can't even handle serving out the 2 minute highlight clips (it was completely hung this morning when I tried to watch Bode Miller's run, which I missed) that it delays until 11:30pm, after its coverage AND the local news has had a chance to run it. What a freakin joke. If people are willing to watch online, figure out a way to make money off of it. Don't worry about your precious ratings, let people watch what they want, when they want.

The weekend in curling is all a blur to me at this point. We lost our first game without our vice on Friday morning to a team from Albany. He managed to make it in time for our second game that day against Utica, which we won Friday afternoon. Thankfully, that was our last game of the day, and we were able to get home to rest up before a long day Saturday.
Saturday's games were all pretty much do or die. If we lost, we were out of the tournament. By this point, all of our Potomac teams had lost out of the First Event, so we were just trying to salvage the less prestigious, but still important Second Event. In our first game at 10:15am, we sent a team from Plainfield, New Jersey home early. They were a little disappointed, but at least they got out before the snow came. I drove home to pick up Lisa and Ellie for our 5:30pm game. Our friend Jason joined us, and in case we won, he would drive Lisa and Ellie home. This turned out to be a good strategy, as we managed to get past a team from Ardsley, New York (just up the interstate from my grandparents, most of the guys lived in Bronxville, which is where me and my cousin would go to get coffee the summer I lived there). The win there put us in a crucial 10:15pm match against Green Mountain, Vermont. As it turned out, all the games were running late, and we didn't even take the ice until 11pm. The loser of this game would have to come back the next morning at 8:30am to play the loser of the First Event semifinals. Not something we wanted to have to do, especially since the snow was coming down hard outside, making the trip home treacherous. Thankfully, we controlled the whole game very well, and it was essentially over after 6 ends. Even so, I didn't leave the curling club until 1:15am, and there was already about 6 or more inches of snow on the ground.
The drive home was harrowing, to say the least. Thank goodness I didn't have to be back at 8:30am, I might have just slept at the club. As it was, I made it home just after 2:30am, through rough unplowed interstates, even after following behind the snowplow brigade. My little Honda Civic hybrid handled the unplowed local roads admirably, and I only fishtailed a couple of times. That was far better than the cars I saw stuck on the side of the road, or the one I saw facing the wrong direction on I-66!
Crawling into bed at nearly 3am, I was still wired from the rough trip home, and tossed and turned until Ellie woke up around 8:30am. Lisa, bless her soul, shoveled the driveway while Max and Ellie looked on, and I made some breakfast. We left about an hour and a half to get back to the curling club, hoping the roads would at least not be any worse than the previous drive home. And aside from a brief slowdown for gawking at a tow truck and some snowplows, the roads were clear, and we made it to the club in plenty of time.
The same could not be said for our bagpipers though. Traditionally, the curlers in the finals are led out onto the ice by a bagpiper, and raise a shot of Drambuie to the piper before beginning play. We were supposed to have a bagpipe band from a school in Maryland for the march this time, but they were unable to make it due to the weather. That didn't stop us from toasting the "King of the Francis Dykes Bonspiel" though. The organizer was dressed up in full king regalia, and he is retiring after this year and passing the throne to a new king. He was a lot of fun.
Shots done, we moved on to the game: a rematch against our rivals from Albany, to whom we lost our first game! This time though, we had our regular vice, and our team was together and ready to play. For all but the second end, when we allowed them to score 3 points to tie the game, we controlled the action and the house. We made their shots for points very difficult, and we made our shots easier and more open. As a result, we scored 3 in the third end, and held them to one point in the fourth, and that was the difference in the game. They ran out of rocks in the eighth end, and we won the second event!
As Lisa pointed out, only a couple of teams finished with records as good as ours, with only one loss. It's quite an accomplishment to win the second event, especially winning five games in a row. Our team, when we were all playing together, forced our opponents into difficult shots, and gave ourselves the chance to score points when we needed to. We definitely played well together, and we're pleased with the result. Our club now gets to keep the second event trophy until next year's event, and we'll all get our names inscribed on it as well. There should be pictures up on our club's photo gallery soon.
Thanks for all who cheered from afar, and all who made it to the club to cheer us on too. We've got one more chance at this five-and-under event next year, so watch out for us in Rochester!

The website for our curling bonspiel this weekend went live sometime in the past couple of days. For now you can view the team rosters, the draw and the results page (which right now just has all the first round matchups. Hopefully if I'm right, you'll be able to see all the results, if not necessarily the scores from all the games.
I was a little disappointed to see that if we lose our first round game, we're forced to play again at 12:45, which would proabably be only a couple of hours after fiinishing our previous game. So I guess we'll just have to win our first game, in which case we'd have a break until 5:30pm. It just seems silly because some of the teams that play tonight do not play again until 3pm tomorrow.
The other bad news is that our vice-skip just told us he has a family medical emergency and won't be able to play tomorrow morning, at the least. While it wasn't bad playing one game on Monday night without him, there's no way we can play an entire bonspiel without him. Even if we found a replacement at this point, it really does mess up the chemistry we had been building all year in anticipation of the event. I guess it can't be helped, but it doesn't suck any less.

(Continuing in the vein of post titles that Mike likes so much) Butter me, I'm on a roll. Or rather, our curling team is. We won another one last night. We played with three players, as one player couldn't make it, which made for some tired sweeping at times, but we actually played better as the game went on. It seems to be a bit of a trend with us. We start off slow, but then come back strong in the later ends. Hopefully this weekend, we can play well throughout our entire games.
Yep, the big tournament (bonspiel) we've been practicing for all this time is finally coming up this weekend. We play first at 8am on Friday. The official webpage is on our site now, but the schedule isn't up quite yet. I think that there should be results posted after every draw this time, since we're running the thing. Our team is Potomac I, for those following along at home.

The DC Olympic effort is getting some attention, albeit from the Metro columnist in the Post who has always been lobbying for full voting rights for DC. And that's most of what this effort is, after all, a spotlight on DC's lack of representation in Congress. It's not a bad article though, except for the part where he calls it the "comic relief" for the Olympics (Note: I don't blame the DC Olympics folks for this at all, it's all on Marc Fisher). Maybe it's never going to get the viewership of figure skating, but it had great ratings in the last Olympics. Plus, we don't leave our scoring up to corrupt judges, or have anyone beating their opponents' knees with sticks. So if that's our lot in life, so be it. I just wish that the people writing the articles would actually take the time to see how much the people playing the sport care about it, instead of doing the knee-jerk ridicule thing. The writer is having an online chat today, and I submitted a comment, so we'll see how he responds.

Another good busy weekend. I got a ton of stuff done around the house, but also had time to get out of the house and have some fun too.
On Saturday morning, Ellie and I went to art class. You can read about that debacle on her page. Afterwards, we stopped by the library to pick up a book for me to read, and one for Ellie too. They were working on the roof at the library, and there was a god-awful smell permeating the place, so we got out of there as quick as we could. Ellie picked out "Truck Duck", and I got both The Rule of Four and Cell, the new one by Stephen King. I had reserved Cell when I found out it was coming out, and last time I had checked, it was still in transit. Apparently they called while I was at art class to tell me it had arrived, and luckily the librarian noticed that it was there when I went to check out. A nice surprise! I'm already 130 pages into the 350 page book, and it's pretty good so far. Rule of Four will have to wait a little while.
The rest of Saturday was spent home improving. I finished the new screen door installation, which was mainly getting the air piston thingies installed. The door doesn't open quite as wide as I'd like, but it looks great. I also put up some insulation in the basement, hoping to muffle the sounds from the TV coming up through the floor into the bedroom. On Sunday I got started tiling the ceiling, which is one of the last steps in the never-ending basement remodel.
On Saturday night, we headed out to Pat Troy's pub for some music by Danny O'Flaherty. You may remember he's the guy who had his New Orleans pub destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. Unfortunately it doesn't look like it's going to ever come back, but it was a good excuse to drink some Guinness and listen to some music. Ellie had fun too, and was entertaining the people around us as much as the singer was.
We headed to the curling club on Sunday for some pickup curling. It was a fun game, and my vice made two great shots in the last end that allowed me to come up and tie the game at the end. He had only been curling for 3 weeks and made some good shots. I've got dibs on him for future games. We left it tied since the DC Olympics crowd was coming in with a camera crew from Fox 5 to tape a segment. I'll have to find out when they're running it, because I think they got a shot of the rings that showed how I tied the score. They seemed like a good crowd, hopefully it gets our club some good publicity for the upcoming Olympics. If it's anything like the last one, it's going to be very crowded over the next few weeks!

Interesting idea from a new web site. Since Puerto Rico, Guam and the like are allowed to field their own Olympic teams, why not DC? Yes, we'll overlook the fact that DC residents can already be on the US team. The point is, the sport they picked as their showcase is curling! They came to our open house a while back, and fell in love with it, like a lot of people do. Of course, qualifying isn't all that easy, as you have to earn points by placing well in the World Championships for three years. But again, we'll overlook that part, and give props to the exposure. Good luck to them!

First, I apologize for the lack of updates on the previously linked website. The Chesapeake Club was running the event, and apparently they didn't update the website like I had thought they would. So, I'll just have to tell you how we did: we won the second event!
For those unfamiliar with curling bonspiels (i.e. all of you), they are run so that each team is guaranteed a minimum number of games played, so that it's worth the entry fee. If you lose your first game, you go to the second event, if you lose your second game, you're in the third, etc. This bonspiel only had 16 teams, so we had 4 events (the fourth event was essentially the third place game, for the teams that lost in the semifinals of the first event). After losing our first game on Friday, we came back on Saturday with two different women on our team, and having them was definitely an upgrade. We absolutely smoked the first team we played in the morning, ending the game after 6 ends. Then we played another game that afternoon, and it was a very close game. My cousin and his fiancee showed up to the game, so I felt like we had to put on a good show for him. We definitely did, and it was the best game of the day, maybe the tournament. We played pretty well all game, but we each missed a shot or two here and there that allowed the other team to stay in the game. In the 8th end, we were leading by two, but the other team had the last shot. Their guy threw a perfect raise and got his rock to land just in the right spot to tie up the score (a raise is a shot where you intentionally hit one of your own rocks to push it into the rings). In the extra end, we were scrambling. We were missing shots all over the place, but our only saving grace was that one side of the rings was open for a draw (a shot intended to stop somewhere in the rings). Our skip threw a perfect shot, allowing us to escape with a one point win. My cousin was very impressed.
It was good to be back and playing on Sunday again. It had been a while since I made the finals, so I was very excited. The bagpiper led us out onto the ice, and every got their shot of Drambuie. Nothing like a jumpstart to your game! Then the game was underway. It was clear from the start that it was going to be a tight game, but I felt good about the way we were playing. Every time the other team had the hammer, we were forcing them to make very difficult shots to score their points. And when we had the hammer, we were getting our points a bit more easily. The turning point came in the 6th end, when we managed to score, I think, three points. It was all a blur, so I don't even remember if we stole those points or just got them with the hammer. At that point, we had a 3 point lead, and we extended the lead with a steal of one more point in the 7th, all but wrapping up the game. It was a good weekend of curling, and I'm feeling very sore today. You can see pictures from the event, including the pig they cooked on Friday night (yes, an entire pig) and our victory picture on our club's photo gallery.

I suppose it was to be expected. We essentially were playing this bonspiel with two guys, and a rotating contingent of women. So naturally we weren't quite 100% in our first game. Unfortunately, our lead was a little bit inexperienced, and so we were at a disadvantage right for the start of each end. But we ended up playing pretty well, getting lucky a few times, and the game came down to our last rock (actually, as it turned out, that last rock was meaningless, as one of theirs out-counted one of ours, and we were drawing dead anyway). I'm happy with the way we played, and I think I did very well trying to make up for our lead's mistakes. Hopefully tomorrow we'll be more solid. I think the ladies we have playing with us tomorrow should, overall, work better with us as a team. We'll have to win two games tomorrow to advance to Sunday, so here's hoping we do well!

Well, a successful first half of the curling season came to an unfortunate end last night. While we were in a dogfight in our semifinal game, our final opponents took care of their game quickly and got a nice long rest. I don't think it affected us all that much, but I was definitely feeling the burn at the end of our second game. So yes, we lost in the final, fighting hard for every point, and making the other team earn their points. A few shots here and there that could have gone differently, and we might have won. So now it's on to the weekend and the Funspiel. At least I won't be playing back to back games, that's a little rough.
On an only slightly related note, because it has to do with sports on ice, and Washington teams, did you see Alex Ovechkin's goal last night? Freakin sick. Goal of the year already. Take a look on ESPN Motion (click to launch the player, and the video will run after a short ad).

In addition to the crazy football games this weekend, you might have missed some other crazy games. MSU beat Ohio State in double-overtime, thanks to Drew Neitzel's only basket of the game and some clutch free throws. Hey Drew, don't be so shy, drive to the hoop my man! Unfortunately, I missed most of the second half and the overtimes since I had to go curling.
Ah, Pizza League curling. It's a crapshoot, let's face it. Many of the players are just learning, and so you end up with a lot of crazy shots. My team was victimized by some crazy bounces, some bad calls by me, and some bad shots by me as well. It's okay though, it's all a learning experience for me as a skip. Tonight is the big game though, with our Men's League team in the semi-finals, and, if we win, in the finals. Also, coming up this weekend, I'll be playing in the "Funspiel," a little bonspiel with our across-the-bay rivals, the Chesapeake Curling Club. Our team is British Virgin Islands (BVI) for those who want to follow the results online. It should be a good warmup for our big bonspiel coming up in a couple of weeks.