I'm here in Utica, NY curl in the 2009 Club Nationals. This is Beth's and my 2nd day here.
On day one, we were picked up by Gabrielle and Sara. That morning, when they went to pick us up, Utica had seemed deserted. The architecture here is gorgeous, but the city seems vacant and a little run down. The kind of town you see in movies with zombies in them. Most of our conversations have been about curling, or about watching out for the zombies.
My favorite quote from Gabrielle is still, "Its all fun and games until someone wants a live human brain."
Additionally, Gabrielle is spending some time getting used to the extra car in the minivan. On right turns, the rear tends to go over the curb.
This morning before the team meeting, we bumped into the Washington men's team : Doug K, John R, Liam B, and Bill R. Liam apparently has appendicitis, HOWEVER you can now fix many cases with medication. Interesting bit of new knowledge.
The opening ceremony was interesting. It was a neat thing to participate in. Our girl scout flag bearer was neither a girl nor a girl scout. Maybe a zombie got to her first? I received my curling pin for the event and it was broken. Just my luck. I went and got a replacement, tried to put it on my jacket, and the pin portion stuck in my jacket and the face fell off. Broken pin #2. The 3rd one has been left in its case.
We ate interesting hor d'oerves at the reception. There were cheese and crackers, 3 different types of hummus dip, sandwiches, little cones with some kind of savory rice mix, little curry chicken pot pies, egg rolls, szechuan noodles, little meatloaf sandwiches with mashed potatoes squished between them and mushrooms stuffed with crab. The Washington teams apparently got in line too early, started with crackers and had to go back for more food. One of the boys might have gotten the evil eye or chastised.
Team Coleman went back to the Radisson hotel for a nice long nap (I had an hour and a half nap). Then I spent an hour and a half trying to handsew my patch on. It was ridiculous. I lost 2,000 meters of clear thread in Area Cyndy One (read area 51, the bermuda triangle, etc). I managed to lose the pendant that cuts thread too, but Beth found that one for me. I ended up having to borrow thread from Sara. Note to self : Pay someone else to sew the patch on, if there's a mesh lining inside.
Played our first game at 8 pm against Illinois. We fought the good fight, but lost and shook in the 8th end 10 -7. We had a few ends where we could have scored big against them, but their skip made the money shots. The ice was very keen and slick. It curled 6 feet to 8 feet.
I made 2 mistakes in the same shot. I burned Gabrielle's last rock in an end, and then I pulled it when it was over the hog line. The second I touched the rock, I realized I had screwed up. Gah! Illinois and Washington had a good laugh about it later. The skip had been a little upset, because she would have left the rock, thinking it would help her. One of her teammates said she would have done the same thing I did.
We found some common interests. One of the women is a chocoholic like Sara. Their lead likes to curl, sleep, and eat, just like I do. Additional things we found out: the skip apparently skipped for Debbie McCormick when Debbie was in high school. The lead was the mother of Jordan? who had played on Amy Wright's team at Nationals this year.
The Illinois team was a lot of fun to talk to afterwards, and I hope we can be as good natured and fun to be around as they are.
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