Things I've Taken For Granite

Today I saw live curling for the first time.  It was the Ontario Scotties Tournament of Hearts, which is to decide the Ontario women's champion who will go to the big Tournament of Hearts.  So I think this tournament should be called the Tournament of Ventricles or something, but whatever.  Here's some of my reactions after seeing a sport in person after years of seeing it on TV:

• The Noise.  You don't realize how loud the rock and the brushes really are.  Or the fact that with five games going on at once, you can't tell which team is yelling "hurry hard!"  I assume they get to know each other's voices.  And the infamous "nice shot" that the skip says after every shot, regardless of how nice it really was?  There's no way the teammates can actually hear it.
• Everything seems smaller.  I know, that affects a lot of sports live vs. televised.  But the sheets seem much smaller.  If the shooter doesn't pull up after releasing the rock, she can coast all the way to the other hogline.  It's amazing there aren't any collisions between sweepers and the other players going back up the sheet.
• Only curlers can see the imperfections in the ice.  On TV, you'll see a rock hit an ice chip and turn, even though you can't see whatever it hit.  One player asked another to clean something off the ice.  It was right in front of me, maybe ten feet away, but I couldn't see it.
• They don't show the guy with the sprinkler who resurfaces the ice during the break.  After the fifth end, a guy goes over the houses with a specialized hose to sprinkle water on the ice.  Weirder is that the hose is connected to a tank strapped to his back.  I'm hoping that someone, somewhere has though of dressing him like a Ghostbuster.
• The scoreboards make no sense.  For big events, the scoreboard is a table listing the ends, with the number scored in each end, and the total scores on the right (like a baseball box score.)  At smaller events, the scores are listed across the top, and the numbers beneath them indicate the end in which the team got to that score.  I'm sure mathematicians would find this inverting of concepts interesting, but it's really hard to read.  I guess the advantage is that they'll need fewer number cards.  But come on, at one end you have computer monitors listing the time remaining for each team.  At the other end, you have unintelligible scoreboards because the club is too cheap to buy a stack of "1" and "2" cards.
• It's freezing in the curling club.  No wonder the expensive seats in the lounge sell out first.  On the other hand, I learned curling is good exercise.  While I was shivering in a winter jacket, tuque and gloves, many of the players were down to t-shirts.