Team Shattered Dreams

Shortly after arriving in town, I decided that if I was going to live in the arctic, I should join a curling team. Unfortunately, when the season began, I still had a shift at the public library on Thursday nights that prevented me from joining my teammates at the rink. Seeing "Team Quigley" written on the league schedule in my absence, Stephanie and Curtis began referring to themselves as "Team Shattered Dreams."

Luckily, I cut back at the library, and along with the addition of Chris (aka Inflatable Elvis), our dreams of curling were resurrected. Two weekends ago, we played in the final Bonspiel of the year, excited to show how much we'd improved throughout the curling season. Unfortunately, we lost all 3 games we played. But that didn't dampen the fact that it was a really fun season of curling, and a great introduction to the game for me. In honour of my year at the Iqaluit Curling Club, I give you the curling rock anthem: The Team Shattered Dreams Theme Song.

(Special thanks to Kate Nova for the use of some of her photography.)

thirty-something-or-other

At least when you're 30, you can imagine that you're just barely 30... sort of an extension of your 20's, where the number is just a technicality. But in a few hours, I'll be 30+1. In other words, pretty solidly and unavoidably a thirtysomething.

I've lately thought of birthdays as a sort of personal New Year... a fresh start where I can get a better perspective on things in my life. Which is kind of what I'm looking for these days, as I start thinking about things like how long I'm going to stay up here, what my next teaching job is going to be, etc. Along with wishing for the cold to subside - it's been flirting with minus 50 with the windchill the last couple of days, and days above minus 30 seem a distant memory. I bought travel books at the library booksale about Trinidad & Tobago and Costa Rica, not because I'm planning a trip to those places really soon, but just so I could read about warm places.

As I go to bed on birthday eve, I'm getting an early present outside my window - a full lunar-eclipse, which looks really cool, especially with wisps of northern lights underneath it.
And tomorrow, I'll get to do one of my newest favourite things, since curling is on Thursday nights. And afterwards, out for a few drinks at the Nova bar. If you live in Iqaluit, hope to see you there. If you're reading this and you don't live here... I probably wish you were here.

Merry Christmas from Nunavut

Taken last night on the way to curling: the Nunavut Legislature, decorated for Christmas. Notice the cold taking visible form in the top left of the picture.

Today the temperature spiked to around minus 15 degrees, which seemed remarkably warm to me. Imagine how I'll feel when I'm back down south!

Oh, and as for curling, with our regular skip Stephanie out of town for the holidays, I skipped the team for the first time, which was fun. With my, oh, month or so of curling experience we managed to do quite well... no, we didn't win, but we got a couple of points, made a few good shots, and didn't get killed. (And we welcomed Bob Izumi Jr. to our team.)

Oh, and happy winter solstice. Damn, it's dark alot here.

Bonspiel

Last Thursday, I finally got Thursday nights off at the library to join the curling team I'd promised to be a part of a couple of months ago. The Thursday league schedule still referred to us as team Quigley, so in my absence my teammates started calling themselves Team Shattered Dreams. Having never curled before, I got a crash course in curling this weekend during the Frobisher Bay Curling Club Bonspiel - during which I played 4 games, or about 8-9 hours of curling in a 24 hour period.

I'm a bit overwhelmed by such an insane amount of curling, but I think I like it. After losing our first game badly, our second game was a tight match which we only lost due to a "burned" rock (one of our players touched a curling stone with their broom, which meant it had to be removed), and a 5mm difference in distance from the centre-circle thing (I'm still working on the lingo). Then, we finally won a game properly, to move us to the Group C final - where we lost, largely due to being kinda tired from so much curling in such a short time. Not that, as a curler with a week's experience, I can really be credited with our team's success - that can mostly go to our skip, Stephanie. But I did go from throwing my rocks wildly and having no idea about judging how fast they were going, to being able to throw them in the vicinity of where I was supposed to. And I think I swept okay, as long as someone told me when to start and stop sweeping.

To top it off, my teammate Curtis along with local blogger Townie Bastard won the grand prize airline tickets.

Stay tuned for more curling adventures.