There is a lot going on in the Northland this weekend:

Friday night (tonight!) at the Duluth Curling Club, Ken and Joanne Docteur host a one night mini-spiel named “The Fun Night Before Christmas“. The event begins at 6pm and is open to the public. Ken and Joanne began these mini-spiels two years ago, and they are a lot of fun– last year’s event coincided with the Women’s Frozen Four (that’s hockey or something?), and the Harvard Pep Band came out to try curling– and they brought some great exposure for the DCC back to the East Coast. So if you have friends who are curious about curling and the off-ice action after the curling is done, bring them down!

Curl Mesabi is hosting the Super One Shootout, a major cash-spiel with a $20,000+ purse. The Super One Shootout is part of the World Curling Tour, and is attracting some big names to Eveleth– the DCC is well represented. 2008 Coach of the Year Phil Drobnick is organizing the event. The first draw is 2pm Friday, and the final is 3pm Sunday. You can watch live scoring at this link.

One big time curler who would probably be in Eveleth this weekend if he wasn’t otherwise occupied is last year’s national champion Craig Brown. He and his team are currently participating in the Continental Cup, an event modeled on golf’s Ryder Cup, in which teams from North America compete against teams from the rest of the world in a variety of curling formats. The games started yesterday, and North America had a few good games: Craig Brown beat Scotland’s David Murdoch 6 to 3, and Kevin Martin of Canada delivered a bruising to Fengchun Wang of China, winning 10-1 (could that be payback for this game?)
The World is currently way ahead of North America in points, leading 36 to 18, but there are a lot of games left. If you want to stay updated on the scores, CurlTV is probably your best bet.

And finally. . . Santa Spiel?