Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Dominion, Day 1

Most regular blog readers knew this day was coming, but for the rest of this week we'll be hitting the curling pretty hard. I know this isn't always the cup of tea for some of you, but this is my life between now and Sunday. Still, for those of you not into curling, I'll try and make it interesting. And for those of you wondering about the house saga, things appear to be falling into place. I'm seriously knocking on wood right now, but it appears we'll be able to move into the house on Tuesday. So that's good.

First things first, if you're interested in following and seeing how Nunavut is doing at The Dominion, go here - www.thedominioncurls.ca. You should see on the page a button to press for CurlCast. If you want to follow the scores real time or see how well each player is shooting, this is the place to go. So if I go from shooting 70% to 66%, you can assume something very bad just happened. If I go from 70% to 73%, odds are I did something right.

The schedule for games is the following

Wednesday
10 am - Nunavut vs. Ontario (men)
1:30 pm Nunavut vs. Ontario (women)
4:45 pm Saskatchewan vs. Nunavut (men)
8:15 pm Saskatchewan vs. Nunavut (women)

Thursday
10 am - PEI vs. Nunavut (women)
1:30 - PEI vs. Nunavut (men)
4:45 - Newfoundland vs. Nunavut (women)
8 pm - Newfoundland vs. Nunavut (men)

Friday
10 am - Nunavut vs. Quebec (men)
1:30 pm - Nunavut vs. Quebec (women)
4:45 - Nunavut vs. Nova Scotia (men)
8 pm - Nunavut vs. Nova Scotia (women)

Saturday is tiebreakers and playoffs assuming we get that far. Nobody has a clue what to expect of us at this event. They've never seen Nunavut curlers before. I take that as a small advantage.

As for the rest, we're seriously being treated like royalty. We have our own driver who chauffeurs us back and forth between the hotel and the curling club. We arrived to find two new high quality shirts, a new broom and our team jackets. And when we had a small problem with one of the jackets (Nunavut's coat of arms was on the back, but not the name of the territory. And I should say, that was our fault and not the Dominion organizers), they quickly gathered up our jackets, took them to a company somewhere nearby and had "Nunavut" added to the bottom. No muss, no fuss, didn't even charge us for it.

In fact, all the volunteers have been exceptionally nice and helpful. When I joked I had a long list of things to pick up before heading home, one of them offered to go and get it for me if I was pressed for time. That floored me, although I politely declined.

It's a class event so far. We even got a really nice round of applause when, during the team meetings, practically the first thing on the agenda was welcoming Nunavut to their first ever national curling championship.

As I said, these are nice people. We really appreciated that.

We had a pretty intense 45 minute or so team practice and this evening is the opening banquet. The games start tomorrow. We'll see how we do then, however so far we're having a blast. Although I really wish I could shake the minor head cold I seem to be brewing. I'm popping drugs like crazy, so hopefully I'll beat this down before it goes anywhere.

Last Five
1. Tiny vessels - Death Cab For Cutie
2. Avalanche - Tim Baker
3. Flutter and wow - Elvis Costello and the Imposters
4. Disease (live) - Allison Crowe
5. Alert status red - Matthew Good*

7 comments:

Shanlee said...

Thanks for the link - I wanted to follow how you guys were doing. Good luck!

Tammy said...

The best thing about curling tournaments is the Hospitality Room! My husband and I are definitely missing the sights and sounds of the curling shed this year! So until I can get down south in March for vacation I will have to live vicariously through your curling posts.

tanker belle said...

I'm thinking Cathy should "guest blog" about the house.

Clare said...

Isn't "follow curling in real time" some sort of oxymoron?

WJM said...

Do you have groupies?

Colette said...

Aw c'mon--no webcast?! Darn it! I especially want to hear the much-touted cursing on the ice......

Count me in as one of those who enjoys the curling talk. I played once in a charity tournament and it was a lot of fun. I'm not the most social person around but I chatted with some nice folks, drank a few beer and had a ball. (And actually threw some nice ones according to my skip.)

The Perfect Storm said...

My first reaction on reading this post a few days ago was "noooo not more curling."

Then I've checked several times a day, every day, for "well? WELL? Where's the curling?! "

How is it going? What's it like?

Has Canada's newest brought their "A" game or are they sled dogging it (see how I did that? you have to admit it was brave) to prepare for a clever and coniving come from behind victory?!

Heavens man! Your readers want to know!

Regards,
etc.

P.S. my kids tell me I have the worst jokes too....