Little Pirate and I would like to see a game; I'm thinking one of the $3 "draws" since were poor. What exactly is a draw?

A "draw" is a group of matches played at the same time. For this event, there will be four matches (eight teams) played at each draw. So you can either watch one game, or switch around and watch all four.

Here is a website with some basic information on how curling is played:
http://www.curlingschool.com/

I hope you and Little Pirate enjoy it. Curling is a great game for kids, and the Duluth Curling Club has a fun program for the younger set. In the league I play in, there are a few family teams, with a kid as "skip" (team leader)-- brilliant parenting!

I believe the word "athletes" should be in quotation marks when in a story about curling ...

I'm in Falun, Sweden right now, and there is some sort of big Bandy game going on tonight at the Sporthallen down the street. As far as I can tell, bandy is a game played with short floor-hockey sticks and a whiffle ball, on ice, while wearing broomball shoes.

And it's not an Olympic sport?

Like many sports, curling can be played at many levels. The casual golfer who has a martini at the first and tenth holes may not be an athlete. Tiger Woods, Vijay Singh et al. are definitely athletes.

Same goes for curling. You won't see beer guts or sagging butts at the top levels of competition.

there is no such thing as a casual golfer goddamnit!

I read in the local rag in Minneapolis that Bandy is played on hockey skates on a rink that is roughly the size of a soccer field. And I thought playing hockey on an olympic sized rink was marathon.