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Monday, April 29, 2013

Curling with Friends

A few weeks ago I hit a major milestone in my life, my 30th birthday. To celebrate, I wanted to go curling with friends. However, it was in the middle of crunch time at Regent so we postponed the celebration until after exams. Well today was the day. And it was awesome!!

First off, I thought curling would be super easy and my ticket to future Olympic stardom. And at the same time, I thought it would be impossible and we'd be falling all over the place. Fortunately I was wrong on both accounts.

It didn't take long to figure out the technique but it was really difficult to make a good shot. As for walking on ice, it wasn't that difficult. We had special grippers on our shoes that really helped.

The hardest part was launching the "rock" (which weighs 44lbs). This is called 'delivery'. It is hard to push off, balance, and launch the rock at the right speed with the right curve at the right spot. Here is a picture of our friend Josh taking his shot.

On the other end the Skip (Liz) helps tell the curler where to aim by pointing her broom and uses hand signals to indicate what kind of rotation to use.


Between them are the two sweepers who sweep the ice in front of the rock. Why do they sweep? Honestly, while we were curling, I didn't know. Roger, our instructor just told us when to sweep but we were having a hard enough time making shots that it didn't seem to matter. I looked up on wikipedia which said that sweeping makes the stone go further and decreases the amount of curl. We'll know for next time. Here are our two friends Carine and Esther sweeping.

Finally, here's a video of us in action. First you'll see Jenny and then me delivering our stones.

My shot, was the closest shot of the whole match within 3 feet of the button (dead center). I wish I had taken a picture as proof.

It was a ton of fun. Oh and here's a funny series of liz who slipped after one of her shots.




Thursday, April 4, 2013

Major Announcement

I'm smack in the middle of crunch time at Regent with three major projects to complete in the next 2 weeks plus a big time History exam on the 19th. And if that weren't enough, I'm starting a weekend class that evening for which I haven't even started the readings. But I've got a huge announcement.

We are ONE YEAR AWAY FROM GRADUATION!!! That's right. Graduation. Which means all you folks who promised you'd come visit us have 365 days to get here. Technically graduation isn't until May 2nd. And technically they call it convocation. But lets get serious, I'm gonna be thinking too much about other things (like starting a kick-butt job [wink wink nudge nudge]) to show you around Vancouver.

So if you wanna see me...






and Liz......







You are gonna have to book some flights, board some trains, or hop on some boats. And do it soon. We would love to see you and show you our city.