What to do when it's 0 degrees

Watch sports, of course!

A while back, as part of St. Paul's Winter Carnival, we (Eric, gigglygirl/Jenny, and I) attended a curling bonspiel (bonspiel means tournament) at the St Paul Curling Club, which is the largest curling club in the US (and founded in 1888!), thank you very much. Eric, of course already knew a bit about curling from watching the Olympics and because he can absorb knowledge about any sport in an alarming fashion. But there were also various members of the club walking around, answering questions. It was very amusing too because they had a special costume theme going on - they were to dress as some kind of duo. There was one team who were milk and cookies! Then Jenny spied someone she knew from work! So we parked ourselves in front of their "sheet," which is the playing field. Jenny's friend's team was Laverne & Shirley, with the guys on the team as Lennie & Squiggy. Cute! The other team was Captain Morgan & Coke. (Although I didn't know what Captain Morgan was...). It was lots of fun.


Yesterday - even though the temperature reached a balmy 24 degrees (F) - we went to a University of Minnesota Women's Basketball game. As many of you may know, Eric grew up in CT and is a die-hard Women's Huskies fan, and I went to college in CT during the initial explosion of women's basketball at UConn so I am a fan too. We are psyched to live in cities where there is a good fan base for college women's basketball and are committed to becoming Gopher fans. Somehow we never managed to go see the Indiana Women's team play- bad on us!!! But we kind of managed to make up for that because the Gophers played the Hoosiers yesterday. It was a good game, and senior day! For the lone senior on the team, who is also captain and one of their best players, Kelly Roysland (#3). To make it even better for her, she returned from a few weeks out due to a broken collarbone and... She played 24 minutes, more than was expected, and... She reached 1000pts right at the beginning of the game! Very exciting. During half-time they had a special presentation for her, during which what seemed like the entire population of her hometown of Fosston, MN came out on the court!

The game itself was a good one. Minnesota and Indiana's records were fairly close to one another and the last time the Gophers and the Hoosiers met, the score was 69-65, Hoosiers won. This game seemed to go in spurts- Indiana would have a run, then Minnesota. But we (yes, we were rooting for the Gophers!) led for most if not all of the game (Eric may remember better) and the final score was 79-69. The team is quite young- as I said Roysland is the only senior. We were very impressed by Emily (Emmy) Fox (#4), a sophomore. She is quick and has some mad skillz. A freshman, Brittany McCoy (#12) also has good passing and shooting skills. Did I mention she's a freshman?! Ashley Ellis-Milan (#21), a redshirt freshman and also a native St Paulian (yay, St Paul!) is also going to be one of our favorites, I think. We are very excited to watch this team develop and become better and better.

The fans were a lot of fun too. Lots of senior citizens, families, high school basketball teams. Almost everyone in maroon and gold. And the band was good too. We will be back for more! Hopefully next year we can get season tickets.