Mar13

Curling!

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Not that I’ve written about it here, but since last October, I’ve spent the bulk of my Friday and Sunday nights out at the Broomstones Curling Club. This past weekend, I took my new found hobby a step further and competed in the Elisabeth Childs Women’s Challenge in Norfolk, CT, a bonspiel for women with 5 or less years of curling experience (that’s me!).
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Smiling is not something I do while throwing a stone
I wasn’t originally going to compete, but a team dropped out at the last minute and I got a call from Tami Gouvais, a member of Broomstones that I knew peripherally but had never curled with. She was attempting to put together a team at the last minute and someone had recommended that she call me. She had been in touch with a woman in Wilkes-Barre, PA and knew of someone else in Philadelphia who were looking for a team. And thus, our rag tag bunch that had never met before was formed.
We wound up doing better than expected — and better than two of the three Broomstones teams that had formed well in advance. (The third team won the whole thing.) We went 2-2 and reached our goal of curling on Sunday by beating a team from Schenectady on Thursday, losing to a team from Utica on Friday, beating a team from Broomstones on Saturday, and losing to another team from Broomstones on Sunday. The Saturday game that kept us alive was by far my shining moment. With the score tied up in the 8th end, I threw a rock that just touched the button and was well protected by guards up front.
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The blue stone was mine!
After I threw the shot, my teammates commented that it got a lot of cheers. I looked up and realized that the entire Norfolk CC warm room and bar was watching our game. I’m glad I didn’t know that before I threw my stones — the pressure was on! But after a few more harrowing shots from the vices and skips, we held on to win and my rock remained shot.
Our prize? We had to buy a round of drinks and get up for a 7:30 AM game the next day. As for that game… well, let’s pretend the tournament ended on Saturday.
(More pictures, including the costume contest and the A event finals, aka the championship game, that was won by a Broomstones team here.)

Jan19

MH2K11

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Here’s my annual recap of the MIT Mystery Hunt. This year we hunted as “The Team Your Team Could Smell Like,” which may be one of our most brilliant team names ever. While we did manage to find the coin, we were the third team to do so. Thus, the brilliant hunt theme harveyj and I are planning will have to wait until 2013.
This year, the theme was Mario — he was finally going to marry Princess Peach, but Bowser kidnapped her at the wrap up and, what do you know, the wedding is in another chapel! No wait… it turns out it was all masterminded by GLaDOS from Portal through a convoluted chain of video game villains all controlling each other in a hierarchy. (I’d be lying if I said I knew who GLaDOS was before hunt, but there were members of my team who guessed the Mario theme with a tinge of Portal just based on the invitation we received before the hunt to a wedding between M&P where cake was promised.)
While the theme was perhaps not up my alley, though well done, there were a number of puzzles I did like.

  • Good Vibrations — Yes, this puzzle is about that Good Vibrations. I cracked it off of “Rubber Duckie.” I am not embarrassed that I knew that and it was hilarious to solve once we figured it all out.
  • Walkthrough — This led to one of my favorite reasons for the a-ha moment. When the puzzle first came out, a bunch of undergrads, convinced it was a runaround, asked me to join them on the trek to Kresge so that someone experienced was with them. (Plus, I had asked for an excuse to leave HQ.) So, off we trekked, but when we got there, nothing seemed to match the second step. I read the rest of the puzzle and decided that we probably weren’t going to find an island of Chinese pirates on MIT’s campus and directed us back to HQ, brainstorming along the way about what the puzzle might actually be. First we called HQ to let them know we were on our way back and asked them to check the page source for any clues we may have missed — nothing. Then James, a sophomore, noticed all of the Wikipedia signs around campus for the 10 year Wikipedia anniversary and suggested that maybe it was a “Wikipedia runaround” of sorts… which of course, it was. It was the sort of brilliant serendipity that I approve of — if I had read the whole puzzle first, I would have talked us out of going to Kresge and James probably wouldn’t have seen the signs that led us to the actual solution. Plus, it was fun to solve.
  • Flat Head — I completely forgot this puzzle existed until thedan reminded me that I solved a bunch of it. Hurray for NPL flats… and Canada.
  • The Word — Okay, to be fair we only solved one of the three puzzles in this one, but we solved it fast. This made it somewhat disappointing when we realized that there were two other puzzles embedded in it.
  • Drafting Table — It’s not that this puzzle was particularly amazing, but it is the only one in which I was the first person to look at it (with a few others… amittai, dwilson, and mehtank, I think) and we solved it without needing any additional fresh eyes.
  • Soooo Cute — I didn’t actually solve this because too many people jumped on it right away, but it worked basically the way I expected it too. Plus, ZooBorns is one of my favorite blogs.
  • The Mega Man Meta — Again, I didn’t solve it, but it is one of the most beautifully constructed things I’ve ever seen.

And a few additional honors go to…

  • Crowd’s Chant — I really want this to be my favorite puzzle ever, but I think it needs a slight tweak in the flavortext to be a good clean solve. That, and I need to remember from now on that the cheap toy keyboard I have is a half-step flat. ‘Cause that screwed us up for awhile. But still, a puzzle about music theory and baseball? What’s not to love (besides the actual execution)!
  • Fascinating Kids — This wins the WTF award. Just read that solution and tell me it is at all a reasonable thing to do. “Near-integer grade level”? From an obscure metric that is clued only by its initials? Yeah, no.

In the end, GLaDOS was defeated and we found the companion cube… well, what was left of it after Codex got there first. Next year, we’re prepared to be that much faster!

Jan12

Snow day

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A big Noreaster came through today, canceling a certain person’s flight in for the Mystery Hunt and keeping the majority of my office at home. (Apparently the suburbs had it the worst as my boss called in to let everyone know that they have no electricity and thus he won’t be on e-mail all day.) But a handful of us were able to brave the white stuff, and we came prepared after making a plan yesterday. Bethany brought the sled, I brought the extra gloves and the camera, and everyone came dressed for some outdoor fun.
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Our little lunch break adventure was broken up when an MGH police officer came over and told us that taking pictures is not allowed on hospital property due to patient confidentiality. (That does make me wonder about the person who took the picture on page 2 of the December 24 MGH Hotline without my permission.) The cop didn’t have a problem with us sledding nor did he seem to notice the doctor we spotted taking a picture of us from inside. But we left anyway for a bigger hill over on the Common.
Er, I mean, we totally went back to the office and were productive.

Jan5

Congrats, Bert!

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Bert Blyleven was finally inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame today. Congrats, Bert, even if you didn’t circle me in Baltimore. In honor, here’s one of my favorite Bert moments (the key moment is at about 0:49):

Dec14

The Vikings got their outdoor stadium

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Being in California for the weekend, I’m slightly behind on posting the news of the Metrodome’s spectacular roof collapse on Sunday.

What’s particularly fascinating to me is that I saw this happen once in person. While my memory is fuzzy, doing a little research leads me to believe that I was there for the April 26, 1986 tear in the middle of the 8th inning of a Twins-Angels game. What I remember is that we were sitting in the general admission outfield area (I think centerfield), and everyone was evacuated to the concourse as dirt poured onto right field in front of the baggie. My dad stayed near the edge of the stairwell into the seats to watch and I stayed with him, which made my mom nervous. She was further back in the concourse with my sister (who was apparently a day shy of her 2nd birthday). But it’s that flush of dirt pouring onto the field that I remember, the memories of which came flooding back when I watched the video of this weekend’s much more dramatic collapse.
What I don’t remember is that apparently the Twins were well on their way to winning when the roof collapsed and they gave up a 5 run lead in the 9th after the game resumed. I also don’t remember how they patched the hole in only 15 minutes!

Oct18

The Homer Dome

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In its recap of today’s Vikings-Cowboys game, ESPN (well, Chris Berman) referred to the Metrodome as the Homer Dome even though a) no one hits home runs there any more and b) the Vikings have painted a whole bunch of it purple in an attempt to make people forget about the Twins being there, plus it’s been rebranded as Mall of America Field. I guess that rebranding isn’t working yet.
Also, as I passively watched the game before my curling match (more on that later), I couldn’t help but wonder how Marion Barber reconciles the fact that he was a Vikings fan growing up, cheering for Randy Moss, with the fact that he was playing against them (and Moss) today. And just for the record, Barber sat behind me in health class senior year (his junior year). That kid fell asleep all the time, but was such a genuinely well-liked guy that the teacher never really got mad at him for it.
Oh, and curling started this weekend. I’m in two leagues — Friday nights and Sunday nights. We won on Friday (when I played lead) and lost tonight (when I was vice-skip). I recall feeling more or less competent at the end of the mini-leagues last spring. I’m not there yet this season.

Oct12

Alaska Minute: Day 5

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Well, this is it for the trip. I woke up this morning at Angel’s Rest on Resurrection Bay, a little collection of one room cabins right on the water that I highly recommend if you’re ever staying in Seward. The best part is the view…

After waking up, I headed out on a 3 hour tour… but unlike Gilligan and company, I did not get shipwrecked. I did, however, spot lots of wildlife… like this little guy:

… and these guys:

Finally, it was time to go. Before heading to the airport to drop off the rental truck, I drove to near-the-top-of Flattop Mountain at the Glen Alps overlook over Anchorage where I filmed the final Alaska Minute.

Aww… I don’t want to go home.

Oct11

Alaska Minute: Day 4

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First, I won the Twinkie Town competition! Thanks for all the votes…
Today was a lot of driving as I had to get from Talkeetna (currently in the running for my favorite town in the United States) to Seward. I splurged on my lodging for the last day and… wow. I’m currently in bed, looking out across Resurrection Bay at the Kenai Mountains. And the bed is really comfortable too!
On the way down, I made two detours. First was to Girdwood and the Mt. Alyeska ski resort. I road the Alyeska tram to near the top of the mountain and hiked the rest of the way. I even made a snow angel at the top! And of course, I stopped and hung the camera on a tree (just at the edge of the treeline) and filmed an Alaska Minute.

My second detour was to Hope. I had heard it was a preserved mining town, but when I got there, I discovered that it was all shut down for the winter. I was mentally cursing myself for going an hour out of my way for nothing when suddenly I spotted a moose — my first Alaskan moose! She was just laying the yard of the old Hope schoolhouse. I was going to take a movie of her, but the camera died — but not before I got the following still shot.
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As I drove away from her, I almost found myself needing some of Sarah B’s advice — another moose darted across the road right in front of me! Luckily I was only going about 15 MPH, so I had plenty of time to stop. The second moose was male with some nice antlers. Unfortunately, the camera battery was still dead, so you’ll have to take my word for it!

Oct10

Alaska Minute: Day 3

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For the first time this trip, I didn’t use the rental trunk today. That doesn’t mean I didn’t go anywhere — in fact, I flew about 90 miles on a flightseeing tour with Talkeetna Air Taxi around Denali (aka Mt. McKinley), including a landing on the Ruth Glacier. I highly recommend it if you get the chance! I made two attempts at an Alaska Minute from the glacier — the first was cut off because I had taken so much footage that the camera ran out of space. The second is a little longer, but you don’t get to see me fall in the snow (which happened right after the camera stopped recording on the first one!). It’s also quieter because I was trying to sneak it in before we had to get back on the plane.


As an added bonus, here’s one of the handful of videos I took from the air. Because I was a solo traveler and the other passengers came in pairs, I got to sit in the co-pilot seat. This is the advantage of traveling alone!

I’ve spent the rest of the day hanging out in Talkeetna, watching the Twins get swept miserably out of the ALDS in the West Rib Pub with some Twins fans and Yankee haters. It turns out there are enough Minnesota/Dakota ex-pats up here that the Twins are pretty popular — and no one likes the Yankees, mostly on principle. (One of the bartenders, hearing that I lived in Boston, showed me her Hall of Fame postcard signed by Bobby Doerr — not as cool as my Tony Oliva hat, but not bad!)

Oct9

Alaska Minute: Day 2

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I saw a bear! A brown bear, to be exact… with her cub… fishing for salmon. And my gut instinct wasn’t to run, but to film it. The staff at the Eagle River Nature Center were quite impressed with the video I got.

Shortly after, I did a full blown Alaska Minute.

And later in the day, I drove up to Hatcher Pass and the Independence Mine State Park, which was blanketed with snow. I came across a family of birds — I know think they are some kind of ptarmigan, probably either willow ptarmigan, which is the Alaska state bird, or white-tailed ptarmigan. I didn’t do a great job getting the birds in the shot for part of this video — sorry about that! You can also see the camera get jostled around when I jumped because a bird took off behind me.