Broomstones Mixed Doubles

Wow - a blog, now I feel like Jeff! I'm famous! Ok - I see there's only one other person who is reading the blog so far, so maybe famous is a stretch.
Derek and I went to the Broomstones Mixed Doubles bonspiel this past weekend. It was a great time. There were 16 teams in all and there are lots of reasons that it's a great spiel. Because of the mixed doubles format and the small set of teams, the first draw wasn't until Friday at 6:30pm - so not a lot of time needed off from work. They have a very nice banquet on Saturday night at the club where one of the extraordinary chefs at Broomstones puts on a show. This years' dinner was cooked by Sharon Cutter and even featured wine pairings with a couple of the courses. Everything was delicious, but particularly memorable where the goat cheese and red pepper phyllo triangles as one of the appetizers and the pumpkin bread pudding (and I don't even really like pumpkin).
The curling conditions were decent as well - lots of curl as they have recently sandpapered their rocks - ~4ft of curl. The hits were curling a lot as well, so I'm wondering if maybe the sheets were a little dished? We really struggled to get a guard up anywhere out to the sides even if we put the broom way out there - they kept overcurling - which I think led me to my thought of possible dishiness.
We were fortunate enough to win the 1st event. There was some great competition and we were lucky enough that when one of us struggled, the other one was generally playing pretty well. Diane Muldowney and Joseph Smith were also at the event and, after losing a tight first match against Karen and Grayland Cousins, they went on to win the 2nd event.
It's a great event and I definitely recommend that others try it out in the future.