Sometimes Bad Is Good

In curling, 9-1 is bad. Not "too many cats, too few litter boxes" stinking ... no, it's more like "a skunk got in the car and now the doors won't open" stinking.

But I don't care. You know why I don't care?

'Cause I played in that game.

Not only did I play in that game, see that number "one" up there? The lower half of 9-1?

That was my stone. And, at that point, that made the score 1-1 after three ends.

Yes, my team fell apart after that. Yes, we didn't score another point. Yes, we conceded after seven ends.

But I played a curling match, and I was bad.

Trust me, bad is an improvement. I was mind blowingly, jaw droppingly, heart-stoppingly horrible before Thursday.

Thursday at the Potomac Curlng Club is one of their two drop-in leagues. Before the league, they have a 45-minute lesson along the lines of the Open House session. ("This is the ice, that is TEFLON, watch us try not to laugh as you bring the two together.") But during that time, FL (pronounced eff ell) was kind enough to work with a couple of us who were having trouble delivering the stone.

Under her tutelage, I actually got the stone over the hog line (curler for "you got the stone far enough we won't laugh at you and push the rock out of play"). Once, I even got the stone into the house (curler for "red and blue rings where you actually score points").

I was excited. If I wasn't wearing TEFLON on one foot or standing on the ice, I would have jumped up and down. Instead, I high fived FL.

Then the game started. In this league you play eight ends (curler for "inning"). Normally curling rinks (curling for "team") have four members and each member throws two stones per end. We were short-handed Thursday night, so we had three-person rinks ... which meant I had to throw three stones each end.

Rick and Russ were the unfortunate individuals stuck with me on their team. They were both very supportive and offered some great tips.

Scott, David and Sarah were fortunate enough to play against us. To be honest, Sarah and I were about evenly matched. Rick, though, had an off night and David was on. Our two skips (curler for "the guys who scream all the orders and throw the stones last") were pretty evenly matched.

After one end, it was scoreless. They scored one in the second end, and then came the third end. Somewhere in my three stones, I tucked one behind a guard on the left side of the house which no one got rid of. Thus, 1-1 after three.

From then on, we couldn't really get anything going. I could not find a consistent weight (curler for "how hard you throw the stone") and Rick couldn't find his handle (curler for "which way the rock turns"). They scored every end after that.

My best shot didn't score. It wasn't the shot the skip had called for. No skip even slightly sane ... oh hell, no skip not wearing a straightjacket in a rubber room ... would ask me for a shot beyond the "try to put it in play" variety.

I may never be good enough to ever try for this shot if given the opportunity.

But I made it.

In the fourth end, the skip called for me to put up a guard (curling for "a stone not in the rings, but directly in line with a stone that is"). I didn't. I threw the stone too hard and too far to the right to be a guard.

My rock hit off one of the other team's rocks, knocking their stone out of scoring position. (This is a good thing.) Then my rock rolled to the left, winding up behind another stone. (This is an even better thing.)

Yeah, yeah, I know. It wasn't what the skip asked for, so it wasn't a good shot, but even he was smiling when I finished.

Even the most veteran curler can appreciate beginner's luck when he sees it.

Sure, the other team wound up scoring that end, but not by getting rid of my rock (which was really well protected), but by making a couple of very good shots that left their stones closer to the center.

It wasn't what the skip asked for, it wound up not scoring, but I will remember that shot for the rest of my life ... and I still can't tell you about the shot that actually counted for the point.

We conceded early (curler for "we gave up after only seven ends"), then they got to buy us drinks. There's something to be said for losing in curling -- the winners have to clean the ice and buy the losers drink.

So I have now actually curled. And I am getting better.

But Debbie McCormick had nothing to worry about.

Traumas Adventures in Curling

To those who have wondered: No, I have not repressed the curling lesson as some sort of life-altering trauma and thus not blogged about it. I just got busy. Really busy.

Okay, I spent part of two days at a curling tournament. But that's busy, isn't it?

To be honest, the Saturday Learn to Curl session, while embarrassing, was not traumatic. At least not to me. I think the glazed look on Michael's face at the bonspiel (which is curler for "tournament") on Saturday morning was probably a vestige of trying to teach me on the previous Saturday. The poor man (dubbed, by me, Michael of the Superhuman Patience) may never recover.

As a recap, I spent Saturday, October 14 flailing around an ice surface trying desperately to prove the people who named it Learn to Curl liars. I did many things that day. I'm not sure how much of it was learning ... or curling.

To be fair, all of the instructors did a very good job.

The day started with the obligatory "watch as we put TEFLON on one foot and try desperately not to laugh at you" segment. While I have not attended the Instructor Clinics offered by the Club (through the auspices of The United State Curling Association, I am convinced that the first test you must pass before they let you torment instruct beginning curlers is not to laugh as people stand on one leg while the other performs some complicated sliding maneuver that has nothing to do with curling (or grace, or balance, or anything other than providing entertainment to those who have managed, somehow, to conquer this utter cancellation of friction).

My great fear at this point was that the Learn to Curl would turn out to be nothing more than an extended version of the Open House session from two days before.

Hah! If only.

On the good side, they did give a great explanation on how to make the rock curl (in case your curiosity is getting the better of you, you point the handle at the rock to either "2" or "10" o'clock and move it to noon in a gradual motion as you release it -- there, don't you feel better knowing that?). This made me happy.

Happy. Remember happy. Happy is a good place. Remember getting the rock to curl "just so."

Then we started the whole delivery process.

As a refresher, the delivery is done by placing your one stable (aka, foot without TEFLON) into a rubber starting block type of device and pushing off from there, while your other foot (the one with TEFLON on the bottom) slides down the ice. Oh, and you're crouching at this point. It should look like this. *sigh* Mine doesn't. Mine doesn't even look close. I have no balance over my right foot (I'm a leftie, so reverse the image I just showed you -- the right foot is the slippy one for me). I don't have a lot of balance over my right foot while crouching just on bare floor and with no TEFLON. You can imagine just how little ice and TEFLON improve matters.

During the open house, we got to practice the push off using two stones and without letting go.

Remember when I said the Learn to Curl was different than the Open House? We didn't do the two stones bit. We didn't even do the one stone and the broom without letting go of the rock.

We just did the "see that bull's eye 90 feet from here? do what Michael just did and aim the stone for those rings" bit instead.

Yeah. It worked just about as well as you think it did. In fact, it probably failed even more spectacularly than your well-developed imagination can picture.

The fall I took on Thursday an act of grace that would have earned 6.0s from the judges (except the Russian judge, who would have given me a 4.3) compared to what I did on Saturday. I teetered to the left. I teetered to the right. I managed to get my left foot in front of me. (Go back and read my description of what the delivery is. If you can figure out how I got my left leg in front of me, please comment immediately because I still don't know.)

A few throws in, a number of people (including me) wondered aloud and in Michael's general direction about the efficacy of my using a stabilizer. It helps. Perhaps it helps more than sponge helps in drying up Niagara Falls. Perhaps not.

No, to be honest, through the constant encouragement of Michael, Steph and Jeff (who were a couple and every bit as cute as the rhyming names suggest) and Pat (a high schooler with more patience than someone of his tender years should have), I persevered. I even curled in the short game at the end.

You know, I could leave it there and let you think that I actually made a contribution to the team by placing some rocks in useful positions. My contribution to the team was giving the guys sweeping practice (not that sweeping would help ... sweeping -- by the best in the business -- only adds five to ten feet). They swear I was getting better. Jeff even swore that I got one stone past West Germany. (It's complicated ... there are a number of flags along one wall of the club. West Germany's flag is a bit more than halfway down the ice.)

Oh, I swept well. Well, if the rock wasn't travelling too fast. If the rock was travelling too fast, I put safety first (which is what they teach you) and waved bye-bye.

So, have I given up? No.

I attended the bonspiel last weekend as a spectator (but then I knew I could watch curling ... I've been doing that for quite awhile now). But I'm going back. Tomorrow. To play in an actual game.

Oh, there is a lesson beforehand, too. Something tells me Michael will be as far as he possibly can be from the club tomorrow night. I don't blame him.

For Those With Short Attention Spans, Or Senses of Humour

Wired Magazine asked famous authors to create six-word science fiction stories. Some are just too funny for words.

Some of my favorites:

Gown removed carelessly. Head, less so.- Joss Whedon

Machine. Unexpectedly, I’d invented a time- Alan Moore

Longed for him. Got him. Shit.- Margaret Atwood (I don't know ... this could be a romance, a biography, a mystery ... the possibilities with this one are endless.)

Lie detector eyeglasses perfected: Civilization collapses.- Richard Powers

The baby’s blood type? Human, mostly.- Orson Scott Card

A Life Lived Fully

I have already touted the amazingness that is The Tuesday Morning Quarterback, but there is a section in today's column that blew me away, and I wanted to make sure the non-sports fans here have a chance to read it.

Below is an obituary that appeared in The Washington Post. While I wish no one the type of travails Mr. Lindes faced in his early years, I do wish each and every one of you a life lived this fully.

-=-=-=-=-

Harald Lindes, 85, former editor of the U.S. Information Agency's Russian-language magazine Amerika, died Oct. 11 at the Deer's Head Hospital Center in Salisbury, Md. Mr. Lindes worked for the USIA for 21 years, starting under broadcaster Edward R. Murrow during the Kennedy administration. Mr. Lindes retired in 1980, then worked for about five years as a personal assistant to cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, former director of the National Symphony Orchestra.

Mr. Lindes was born in St. Petersburg, Russia. When he was 15, his father was arrested and executed, and his family was exiled to Siberia. In 1939, he returned to study in his native city but in 1942 was arrested by the Stalin regime, sentenced to a labor camp and sent to the Finnish front, where he was captured by the Finns. Because of his German name, he was handed over to the Germans, where he was drafted into the German army.

After World War II, he left Europe and moved to New York and then Monterey, Calif. He became a master sergeant in the Army Reserves and began teaching Russian at what is now the Defense Language Institute in Monterey. He moved to the Washington area in 1958, working briefly for the Voice of America before joining the USIA.

Apart from work, he enjoyed researching his genealogy at the Library of Congress and reading Russian history and works of world culture and religion. He also enjoyed travel and growing vegetables and herbs at his home in Kensington. Survivors include his wife of 60 years, Olga Lindes of Kensington; two children, Nina Willett of Ocean Pines, Md., and Hal Lindes, a guitarist in the rock group Dire Straits, of Los Angeles; and seven grandchildren.

Geek Fun of the Day

I'm behind the curve on a lot of these things, so my erudite and hip readers will already know about this, but I'm having way too much fun and have to share.

Coolest thing I've come across in a long time: Netvibes.

In case your erudition or hipness has not led you in this direction, let me tell you a bit about Netvibes.

Netvibes allows you to create your own home page that you can access anywhere you are and on any computer you happen to find yourself at. For instance, my home page has four tabs: the main page with my bookmarks and frequenty visited pages just a click away (and that open in a new window), five news feeds that I particularly enjoy (Snopes, Washington Post, BBC, ESPN, etc.), a search pane that does searches on four different search engines (and tabs the responses so you can flip from one to the other), weather, and an e-mail connection (that I"m not quite technologically savvy enough to get working properly).

Another tab has comic strips (Garfield and Dilbert) as well as a Sudoku puzzle. Another has the tech geek newsfeeds.

And the final (and the really cool thing) has my stickie notes. Yes, I can make a note (perhaps on a blog entry) on my work computer and have it when I hop on the Internet at home! Heck, when I'm travelling, I can make a note of something on a random computer in a library and have that note when I get home.

Ultra cool ... at least to my little geek brain.

A Sports Column for Non-Sports Fans

Dropping in for a quick note.

I'm a sports nut. I know this. I won't say I wear the badge proudly -- I own very few sports-related t-shirts or sweatshirts (and quite a few theatre (especially Shakespeare) themed ones.

But I watch Sportscenter pretty religiously, and check out espn.com quite a bit.

And I do it religiously on Tuesdays during the football season.

Tuesday Morning Quarterback isn't just a review of the previous two days' pro football contests. In today's column, for instance, in addition to his "Cheerleader of the Week," his recounting of the best and worst plays of the weekend and his obscure college football scores of the week, he talked about the politics of blame, books that might help with the "Why am I here?" questions (for T.O. of course ... but a serious and interesting list nonetheless), the crisis mentality of newscasters, the death of one of the last big-city afternoon newspapers, North Korean public relations, and airline and SUV safety issues.

Try finding that in any other sports column!

Photographic Evidence

I will post more later, but I did want to share ....

Evidence That I Curled.

I'm not saying which one is me, but I will confess that I'm "featured" in the "falling down" section (at least there were four or five others). And I'm in the background in a few other shots.

I'm also in the background in some of the "Learn to Curl" photos.

While I'm linking to those photos, I will point out Michael of the superhuman patience. He got stuck teaching me and was amazingly supportive.

Until I have the time to post more fully, I can tell you this: it is possible to have sore muscles in your neck that make it next to impossible to eat an apple without cutting it up first.

Trust me on this.

Teflon and Ice Don't Mix

For those who know me, the following post will elicit an "it's about time" comment. For the rest of you, it's probably more along the lines of "why in the world did you bother?" reaction.

I went curling last night.

Okay, that's an overstatement. Curling is an actual sport where talented individuals slide 42-pound rocks toward a target some 90+ feet away, angling for the best position after 16 stones are thrown. There are other talented individuals who race down the ice as fast as the stone, sweeping hard enough to melt the pebbled ice just so that the stone can travel farther or straighter.

Key words that make it clear that what I did last night was NOT curling: talented, slide, 90+ feet, 16 stones, race, sweeping hard.

What I did last night can best be summed up with this description: a very clumsy individual tried desperately to balance on ice while wearing TEFLON on one foot and made desperate attempts to push a stone farther than I fell. Oh, I did so-so on the sweeping, as long as the stone was travelling really, really, REALLY slowly.

To back up a bit: The Potomac Curling Club graciously held an open house last night to infect gullible idiots encourage fans of the sport to take it up.

I had done my homework. Heck, I'd been an avid curling fan since the 2006 Olympics. I have my subscription to CurlTV and spend a good deal of time at The Curling Zone and The Curling News blog. I have bought The Black Book of Curling (even if it hasn't arrived yet) and subscribed to The Curling News.

I knew it wasn't easy.

But I didn't know how hard it really was.

Three friends and I descended on the curling club (a four-sheet club that is part of a HUGE ice skating/hockey complex (three rinks!) outside of Washington, DC. I dragged them along, although they all were good sports and seemed to have a decent time despite injuries and pain.

The stretching was fine. I can stretch. I can't stretch well, but it seldom involves fearing for my life.

Then they put a slider on my shoe.

For those who have never curled, a slider is a device that attaches to your shoe so you can slide when delivering the stone. The bottom of this instrument of torture is Teflon. Let me tell you here and now, there is a huge difference between "sliding" and "putting Teflon on the bottom of your foot and removing all friction in the known universe."

Just standing became an issue. First secret I learned -- the brooms are really there to give beginning curlers something to keep them from falling over as often. Second secret I learned ... always step onto the ice with the non-slippy shoe first, and step off of the ice with the slippy shoe first.

Third secret: "thunk" is not a good sound. One friend fell at the first station (which was basically the "this is ice, that is Teflon, we're going to laugh hysterically as we watch you try to cope in a world where the two come in contact with each other"). She went from vertical to horizontal without seeming to pass through any intermediate positions. Her head went "thunk." "Thunk" is not a good sound. Fortunately, she got up quickly and rejoined the group before we got to the next station.

Fourth secret: curling is a lot easier when you're pushing two stones and not required to let go of either one of them.

At the second station, they taught us how to push off from the hack. (The hack is a small rubber thing that you put your non-slippy foot in so you can completely lose any balance you ever had.) In this exercise, we pushed off with a curling stone in each hand. I'm not good at this by any means, but I am a helluva lot better than I am pushing off with a broom and a stone, or (heaven forbid) actually having to let the stone go.

(Fifth secret: Sometimes it hurts worse when it doesn't go "thunk." At this station, while simply moving to get off the ice, another one of my group fell onto her wrist. From that point forward, she sat and watched with ice on her wrist.)

Very few of your here probably remember Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, but they had a old-man character played by Arte Johnson who would ride a tricycle slowly, eventually falling over.

If you change the image from an old-man to a middle-aged woman, and a tricycle into a Teflon shoe, you'd get the same effect. I push off. I go a few feet (barely to the button for those who know the layout). My momentum runs out. I tip over.

This pattern changed little as I moved from the "hold on to two stones and don't let go" station to the "hold on to the stone and use your broom for balance but don't actually release the stone" station.

With this level of ineptitude skill under my belt, they actually asked me to let go of the stone.

The comparison between that old man on the trike and me became painfully obvious when we got to the "the game requires actually letting go of the stone" station.

Yeah, it worked about as well as you think it did. I think I got it to go about halfway down the ice. Maybe. Okay, I'm probably exaggerating.

(Give me credit, though. I did not -- as two of my friends did -- resort to trying the long stick thing that allows you to deliver a stone without even bending over.)

Sixth secret: sweeping isn't as hard as it looks. In fact, it was actually kind of fun and I could do it ... albeit slowly. I can actually see myself getting better at that.

At this point, the lesson ended, and the comedian running the final station (the "letting go of the rock is kinda crucial" station) invited us to join in a practice game. There was no way I was ruining the sport for anyone else.

Today? Today, I'm not nearly as sore as I thought I would be. My back's tender, and there's one small place on my thigh that's acting as though it wants to complain, but can't quite work up the energy.

So I've tried it.

And I'm going to try it again.

Yes, I was horrible at it. Yes, with my utter lack of coordination and grace, this is probably not the sport for me to participate in. Yes, I felt foolish and frustrated.

But I liked it.

So I've signed up for a three-hour course on Saturday. (And please notice that the course description starts with "safety on ice." They're kidding, of course. They're putting Teflon on your foot, putting you on the ice, then telling you to be careful.)

Saturday will probably be my "fish or cut bait" session. If I don't ever see myself pushing out from the hack and getting near the hog line, or delivering a stone over the hog line at the other end (on my sheet -- you'll notice I didn't even talk about my aim in my earlier description), I may have to rethink this. If I see even a little progress ...?

Well, let's just say you'll hear all about it right here.

Don't you feel lucky?