Monday, November 19, 2007

Curling Review

Curling: potentially the second greatest sport ever (behind baseball). John, Robert and I did the curling thing on Friday. The result? A couple hours of heaven followed by a day of tight hamstrings. The evening started out with a short video on the history, rules, and scoring of curling. Since we had all watched the Olympic curling religiously, this was mostly old news for us. After applying a giant strip of tape to the bottom of our left shoes, we made our way to the ice, grabbing our brooms on the way. The instructors were kind enough to remind us that we should step onto the ice with our gripping foot and not the sliding foot. Despite the reminder, a few people in the class almost went down. The first thing to address was the throwing motion. We lined up along the boards on one knee with the brooms laid on the ice in front of us. We then pushed off the wall to learn the curling throw form. After a couple tries, we replaced the broom with a rock in each hand and again pushed ourselves off the wall. Again, after a couple tries, we moved on to the next activity. The next step was using the actual curling blocks (called hacks) instead of the boards. The first attempt at this was using a rock in the shooting hand and a "training wheel" of sorts (basically a plastic handle to lean on). After one attempt with the training wheel, we replaced it with the broom and we were curling.

After a few trial runs, they let us start throwing rocks the length of the sheet. All three of us left the first toss short. In fact, we didn't even make it to the hog line, which is the line that you must pass in order to leave the rock in play (either as a score or as a block). Of course, our second throws all went straight through the house as we all managed to over correct our weak first throws! After that, we started to put rocks in play with more consistancy. John was the first to place a rock in the house and Robert and I followed with house shots later in the night.

I can't begin to explain how fun it actually was. I would highly recommend the introductory class for anyone who is looking to fill a couple hours for one night. It was $20 and completely worth getting a glimpse into a completely new sports experience. We had so much fun, we are looking into joining a league. The problem is the expense of the league. The league costs $225 per person (with 4 people on a team) for a 10 week season. That is the nature of ice time in Colorado. Expensive. However, we are going to look for a sponsor to pick up half of the registration fees and team shirts. That might make it more reasonable for all of us. As always, I will keep you posted on the progress of our Olympic curling team!!

After reading Dunham's blog, I, too, realized that I have been blogging for over 2 years now. Time has truly flown by the last couple years and I am glad I have been able to throw some thoughts, observations, etc. down for other people to see. Hopefully you have enjoyed it as much as I have.

To the next post!
Mike

Friday, November 16, 2007

Curling. Need I say more?

Tonight, I am going to step into the awesome world of curling. Robert, John, and myself watched the Olympic curling religiously when we lived together on Lee Ct. About two months ago, I was bored and I went looking for curling locations in Denver. I found the Ice Ranch, near my parent's house. They had ice for curling and they had a mailing list, so I got on it. Last week, I got an email from the Ice Ranch that was advertising curling lessons. Obviously, we could not pass this up. So tonight, the three of us will be learning how to curl. This takes me one step closer to my Olympic dreams!!

I'll definitely have a post after the curling lesson. This is going to be sweet!

Friday, November 09, 2007

Married Life Pretty Much Mirrors Fiance Life

I think the title pretty much sums it all up. There are a few differences, obviously, but for the most part, married life is pretty much the same as pre-married life. The good thing is that married life is still pretty dang good!

There have been two specific things that have been the hardest for me to get used to. The first is calling Sarah my wife instead of my girlfriend or fiancee. You would not believe how hard it is to get that right the first few weeks after the wedding. In fact, after getting back from my honeymoon, I went to the Rockies' play-in game at Coors Field. As we were sitting there, the guy next to me and I were conversing about Jamie Carroll. I said, "My girlfriend thinks it is funny that he could fit in her clothes." Then after realizing what I had said, I said, "I mean my wife." He may or may not have given me a strange look. I told him, "It has been pretty recent." I'm not sure he was quite on board with my excuse!

The other thing that is a weird transition is the complete combining of our finances. Now granted, we had been very aware of each other's financial situations. We did just pay for a wedding and we had a joint "wedding" account. However, when it came time to buy Sarah's birthday present, it became painfully obvious that I was using her money (technically) to buy her present. It was a weird feeling. I can't really describe it more than that. It was just bizarre to realize something like that. It is a feeling you can't prepare yourself for. Weird.

Since the wedding and honeymoon, life has pretty much returned to normal (without the stress from the wedding planning). The last couple weeks of work have dominated my schedule. Both projects that I am working on have deliverables due the same week. This makes for lots of work with little time for Mikey. So I have been making myself comfortable in my little cube way more than I would like to be there. Thankfully, I have cooled out this afternoon so I can coast into the weekend!

By the way, my wife is the greatest wife ever. For multiple reasons. But one of the more recent reasons involves her buying me a Wii for my birthday/Christmas/Valentine's Day/Flag Day. The Wii is such an incredible gaming experience. The normal button pushing is still there, it is just combine with arm motions and craziness! I am a huge fan of all the games I have played so far (Mario Party 8, Metroid Prime: Corruption, Wii Sports, Madden '08, The Bigs, Tiger Woods '08). I think the next ones to try will be Guitar Hero and one of the Tony Hawk games. I'll let you know how it goes.

"Remember, remember, the 5th of November, the gunpowder, treason, and plot.
I know of no reason why the gunpowder treason should ever be forgot."
On the 5th of November, Ron Paul's raised $4.2 million for his presidential campaign. That value is a GOP record for fundraising in a 24 hour period. His campaign staff used Guy Fawkes Day (November 5th), as a basis for their fundraising efforts. They wanted to raise awareness for the libertarian cause as they raised money for their candidate. Let's hope that Ron Paul's presence in the Republican primary opens a lot of eyes about the ridiculousness of our current government state.

The Colorado Rockies will be hosting a series against the AL Central Minnesota Twins the 16th through the 18th of May. Needless to say, I am quite excited for this weekend. I plan on being at all three games. Let me know if you are interested in doing the same.

Once again, I apologize for the delay between posts. With the wedding over and the work chaos dying down a little bit, I hope to be on top of this little blog thing.

Talk to you all soon,
Mikey