quicksand

So the first game of the Wednesday league was last night. We had the late draw, which is fractionally better because a person can get there on time, but much worse because you don't get out of there until forever. Especially if you're -- well, I'll get to that.

My team is a little unorthodox: KH, by which (for jgesteve's benefit) I mean KaHar, is nominally the skip, and throwing last rocks, but vicing. DoHo, normally referred to here as Vice D, is throwing third. I am throwing second but calling the game, on account of neither K nor D was willing to skip. BrWa is throwing lead -- throwing lead, playing lead, the whole thing, he's very secure in that position. BiWh is our alternate, a built-in spare, although there will be times we'll need another one and possibly another two. (Nice: three legit members could be away, and there'd still be two to show up, preventing a forfeit.)

We may revisit this.

Our game last night was against JaSe, RaSe, JeVa, and JeEr. It did not start well: we lost the toss, and they took three in the first end. They stole one in the second; we got one in the third; they took one in the fourth. By this time an hour and a half had gone by. An hour and a half to play half a game. Gah. And the thing was, we were all playing a little on the slow side, but J was playing miles slower than I was. Miles. It takes him whole minutes to decide on his shot -- this as early as second rocks -- and then when it's his turn, he walks back to the hack, gets his shoes ready (he has grippers to remove from both feet, for some reason), puts down his broom, grabs his stabilizer, gets the rock, gets in the hack, and then looks up to look at the broom and get himself ready for the shot etc. GOING CRAZY OVER HERE. His front end should get the rock ready for him, for a start, but also, he should move faster! and make decisions faster! and so on. I know there are blood sugar issues for him, and obviously one doesn't want people falling down, so I have a bit of sympathy. But not a lot!

Anyway. Playing a little faster, we took one in the fifth; they took one in the sixth; we took two in the seventh; and then, horror of horrors, we stole two in the eighth to tie the fucking game. It's close to midnight and we have to play an extra end.

We (they, I should say, because they had the hammer) managed, unwittingly, to blank the ninth end.

We settled it with skips' rocks; I threw for my team, on the grounds that I'm the skip, if not the fourth, and my draw came up short. J had a good draw, and we shook hands and hung out for about three minutes and -- hey, my team had closing duty. D vacuumed and B took out the trash and we all made sure the doors were locked &c., and I got in the car to go home at FIVE MINUTES TO ONE.

I hate the late draw.

oh! yuletide!

I meant to -- this is one of the things I should have made an entry and tagged "yuletide 2006", because otherwise I'd forget, which I did -- I meant to suggest My Fair Lady, for the heaps and heaps of Higgins/Pickering!

[cannot check master list at present workplace, because yuletidetreasure.org is filtered][crosses fingers and hopes someone else nominated it][makes a note not to forget this in yuletide 2007]

at this workplace

So as you may have known or heard or worked out or suspected (or not given a damn about, I suppose), I have left the Council for Ketchup Marketing and am now in a temp gig a few blocks away at the Association for the Advancement of Tomato-Based Condiments. It seems that a couple of weeks ago, a whole department (five or six people) up and gave notice all at once, so I'm at a desk with no neighbors doing some work for some people and also, apparently, holding down a department that has no staff of its own at the minute, so nobody really knows what to tell me when I have questions.

Membership dues well spent.

It hasn't, yet, been frantic; rather the reverse, actually. It's almost frustratingly boring. This is supposed to be a six-to-eight-week assignment, and this is the second day, and I'm already hoping I get hired away sooner rather than later. (Of course we always hope that, but now I hope it even more.)

Bright side: I am required -- required -- to hand in my Kastle key at the front desk by 5pm every day. So there is no danger I'll ever be required to do overtime (I'm a fan of more money, but around here I don't mind so much), and no danger getting stuck here will ever make me late to curling. (Getting stuck in the traffic, that's another story.) It's 3:35, and I'm like, barely more than an hour before I'm outta here ... thank god.