men's world curling championships: wheat and chaff

So the round robin is over.  The standings are thus:

Scotland      9-2
Canada        8-3
Norway        7-4
United States 7-4
Finland       6-5
Switzerland   6-5
Sweden        6-5
Australia     5-6
Denmark       5-6
Germany       4-7
Japan         2-9
Ireland       1-10

Page playoffs:  Scotland (1) vs. Canada (2); winner through to the gold medal round, loser to bronze medal match.  (flt is working that draw (timing assistant), which is a plum gig, because of 27 people, five were chosen to work this single game with its high stakes and everything.)  Norway (3) vs. USA (4); winner through to bronze medal match, loser out.  (I'm the timing assistant on this one, which see above.  [beams])

Semifinal (bronze medal match):  loser 1-2 vs. winner 3-4; winner through to the gold medal round, loser gets bronze.  (I'm timing assistant again.)

Final (gold medal match):  winner 1-2 vs. winner semifinal; winner gets gold, naturally, while loser gets silver.  (flt is timing assistant again.  We?  Are so totally being Groomed.  We've made it known that we're interested in continuing to train and amass expertise and so forth; and while three of the five people chosen to work each Important Game from here out will actually be doing things rather than 'assisting', those three people are not -- I believe -- split two and two the way we are.  And they have far more experience with high-stakes, high-pressure games than we do, so I for one am not sorry that, for instance, the woman who spent the whole Salt Lake Olympics running the clocks will be timing the final.  I'm just glad we get the opportunity to move up a rung; no need to rush to the top of the ladder.)

In short:  Scotland and Canada will medal.  Either USA or Norway will get a medal as well, but not both.

Each of the page playoffs could go either way.  Earlier this week, Scotland beat Canada and Norway beat USA, but both games were close* (and Norway and USA both beat Scotland, incidentally), and all four teams have had moments of absolute boneheadedness.  Interestingly, Scotland and Norway have had less of this than USA or Canada, I think, but there have been some goofy shots called, and some frankly very easy shots missed.  (One finds oneself thinking, "These guys aren't so great -- I could have missed that shot just as badly as they did.")  I'd like to see [preferences redacted until I'm no longer working], but more than that, and this is true, I'd like everyone to play as well as they can.  Which they haven't, always.  If all sixteen of these boys make their shots, the next couple of days will be damned exciting.

IN OTHER NEWS:  Went to the dentist today about the tooth that has been bugging me.  (Called them on Monday and was able to make a short-notice appointment.  Yay!)  She took an x-ray and agreed that it looked like something could be wrong, but admitted it would be difficult to see what without removing the filling, the difficulty being that as I don't live locally it would make following up whatever she did next impossible and she couldn't decisively rule out that something was wrong with the nerve, which replacing the filling wouldn't fix.  I said since this filling obviously has to come out no matter what, can we delay the decision about what to do until you've taken it out and looked at the tooth, and she said sure, so she gave me half as much novocain as my normal dentist would have, which worked twice as well, and removed the filling (which was misshapen in a way I know it wasn't when he put it in) ... to find a biggish cavity underneath it.  It's possible my dentist missed it in the first place, she said, but it's even more likely that it wasn't there (or wasn't visible) at the time to be missed.  But it was sure there now, so she drilled that out as well and filled the whole thing up again.  The new filling feels eight thousand times better against my tongue than the old one did.  I'm still a little twingey from the novocain, but the rest of the pain/discomfort is gone.  I hadn't, as usual, realized how much it had been bothering me until it wasn't anymore.  I said that this afternoon, when I was still slightly numb; I say it more so now, having noticed that I've gotten in the habit of chewing on the other side of my mouth.  I felt so much better when I got out of the chair that I hugged the dentist before I left.  And it's gotten better since then.  SO MUCH YAY.  A punch in the credit card, of course, but still cheaper than carrying dental insurance, so I called my mother to let her know I'd even had the toothache in the first place, as well as that I'd paid to have it fixed, and mentioned how much more modern and so on this dental practice was than the (very good, kind, gentle, etc.) one my parents have been using since before I was born.  All kinds of huzzah.  And now I will go to bed and -- here's a concept -- maybe not clench my teeth.

world men's curling championships: wheat and cracked wheat

So USA has come fourth in this year's worlds, having lost to Norway 8-5 this evening.  At least it was a good game -- a better game than the score seems to indicate, although not as good as it could have been if Fenson et al. had brought their A game (which is totally what Ulsrud and his gang brought; I think they missed one shot in ten ends).  Which, thank god it was a good game, because earlier today?  Canada vs. Scotland?  Over in six ends, with Canada winning 8-2.  I've never seen anything like it.  Even Scotland vs. Germany in the round robin (in which Germany had the hammer in the first end and didn't take a point until the sixth) wasn't like this.  I spent an hour and a half watching four guys slit their own throats.  They're going to have to get it together tomorrow, if Norway continues to play well and they (Scotland) want something shinier than bronze to go with their Olympic gold medal.