The adventure where I curl

So curling. That funny sport with brooms. Watching it during the winter Olympics, I thought this may be only sport left that I even had a chance at. Okay, it would be less than <0.00001% but that's my best shot at being an Olympian!

At the time I found out that my city does have a local curling club and they offer clinics to learn to play for $20. So I made it one of my first adventures.

So I drove over and found out it was surprising close. It was in the back of a warehouse and I was a little iffy about it. Then I walked in. It was nice; nicer than I expected. The warm room was set up like a mini bar with loads of drinks.

It was a little awkward being by myself while waiting to start. There were several couples, a family group, several large groups of guys. I will say that I did not mind the male to female ratio though. There were about 40 people and it was 90% guys. You do the math, but all I can say is the other 3 ladies were already taken.

Unfortunately I ended up with 2 couples when we broke into groups and went out to a sheet (playing field). We learned sweeping and then throwing the rock. I really liked the throwing part! They gave us these ice soles to slide on, which looked like a Dr Scholl's foot pad. I actually did good my first run. On my second throw, I had more trouble. I led with the wrong foot so I was sliding on my regular tennis shoe. Somehow I made it pretty far anyways. The instructor was amazed and said he had never seen anyone do that before. That's me, an original alright.

Towards the end they started explaining the game faster. It was noisy so I couldn't always hear what our instructor was saying so I don't know the rules very well. You can spin the rock clockwise or counterclockwise. Since I'm directionally impaired that part was tough.

Our group played a few innings against one of the groups of young guys. I never got one in the house although I kept upright, while throwing. The lady who could never get very far when throwing turned out to be the best one and she got hers in the house every time although she was falling all over the place. It's tough to keep up with the rock since you can't run.

It turned out to be really fun. Curling is like bowling or boccie ball on ice. Sweeping as I learned helps melt the ice and can make a rock go further. A good sweeper can make a rock go an additional 12-15 feet.

Afterward in the warm room, I enjoyed a beer and they explained about instructional leagues. It's $100 and you get to play 5 games. One league is available when I can do it and I'm really thinking about it. It's not that strenuous of a sport, but I haven't played a competitive sport in a long time and that might be just the speed. 5 weeks is a pretty low commitment level and it would get me out and mixing with other people.

Even though I didn't get to socialize much; I was having fun, trying something new and not thinking about my soon-to-be-ex. It ended up being the best day I've had since he asked for the divorce and felt like I could be happy again.

The adventure where I start a blog.

Hello I was thinking about starting this on New Year's Eve, but I've already got an adventure lined up this week so I'd better start now. 2010 has been a really bad year for me. It seemed like things just kept going wrong; appliances breaking, my car getting broken into, finding out that my hot career field has an ice cold job market when I graduate this coming June, a really tough last quarter of classes, starting rotations that take a lot of time. Just when things couldn't seem to get any worse my husband of two years asked me for a divorce a few days before my 31st birthday in early December. I fought hard with him to try to work things out. However he already had a new woman all set to be his girlfriend once he broke the news to me and I guess being with her seems a lot easier and more fun than going to couples counseling to try to save your marriage. Now that the shock has worn off, I can see that I'm going to be better off without him since it's not the first (or second or third) time he has lied to me. So I know things are over for good and he has moved his stuff out and we are just trying to get our dissolution written up and signed.
So the last few weeks have been hard for me. I'm never been a very social person. Outside of my family and husband, I don't have a strong social network. I have social anxiety and am on a waiting list for a counseling center to finally address this problem. There's been a lot of things these past years that I've wanted to try, but didn't because I had no one to go with or I was saving money for the future I was planning to have with my husband or I was just too intimidated to try them.
In short I don't want to be home alone moping and feeling sorry for myself. Even though this was not how I was planning to start my year, I'm determined to make it a fun and happy year.
In short I've declared 2011 my year of adventures. I'm going to try new things and try to make the best life I can. I decided to blog about what I'm doing for two reasons. This way if I feel sad about being alone, I can look over all the fun things I've tried to cheer me up. The second is for anyone else out there going through a divorce or break up and not sure how to be alone or dealing with social anxiety that maybe reading about my year will help them see that if I can do it, you can too!
Now my adventures may not be the skydiving or swimming with sharks variety. Some may be more of an achievement type of adventure such as tackling a minor home repair by myself. But I will try and get out and do some really cool stuff and I've got something fun planned for this Wednesday.