Chantel's Blog

I enjoyed this post so much I had to share. Originally posted on  Just Another Vegan Endurance Junkie : 1. Don’t. Just kidding. In fact, endurance junkies are some of the most quality people around. All of those hours spent alone with ourselves in the meditative realm of Zone 2 really forces us to think about things like who we are, what we believe in, the meaning of life, what we’re going to eat immediately when we get home, and other critical themes. But it’s not as simple as run, rinse, repeat. Being a true endurance junkie is a lifestyle. It’s a state of mind. For many of us, training makes us better people every day. It serves us in ways other people or experiences have not or cannot. And so we find ourselves caught up in a committed relationship, legs intertwined with the goddess of multisport. As I once (perhaps mistakenly) told a past boyfriend: “You may be my boyfriend, but triathlon is my husband.” Needless to say, this did not go over very well. I was mostly kidding, but...

My  decluttering adventure has been slowing but hasn't stopped. When I started my goal was just to clear some things out. Then it changed to get rid of everything I could not replace. I have managed to still keep more things than I need, but I have still made a dramatic decrease in clutter. And I imagine that I will let go of more things still as I got thru them a second time. I was also able to start some packing. I still have many things that a belong to my child off at college. So I knew I could pack those things up and know one would mind.  My housing searching had been on hold. There are some things that need to be decided. That I have no control over and until these decision are made I don't know if I will be staying in Austin or returning to Seattle.  Then I found out that I can only stay at my current house till mild of this month. I was hoping to have till the end of May but that turned out not to be the case. So I have had no choice but to look for new housing. ...

    It has been four month since the last time I have and many things have happend. I don't want to bore you so I will just give you a few of the highlight. My library volunteer job became a paid position. Due to the winter season I am no longer working at the trailer. I finished three more 5k. One of them was the Blacklight run that I got to do with my youngest and some co workers.       2014 is here and I can just feel that it is a year of change. I am hoping to get more races in this year. I have eleven race on my calendar so far and I will be doing a  virtual marathon each month too. My first race for the year will be a the Austin half marathon and it's just 19 day away . As it get closer my runs are getting longer which is nice because it give a little more quiet time.       I am also working on the garden. I have two planting of cold crops in and should be be seeing some harvest from the first planting soon. Since I grow my pl...

 The area we write to express concern about is in South Austin. The 78748 zip code, like all of Austin, has experienced incredible growth in the last ten years. According to the 2010 Census, the 78748 zip code has a population of 41,000. In 2000, this number was just over 25,000. With this influx of people comes increased traffic. We write to ask for three things to be done to help make the Slaughter Lane and Manchaca Road corridors safer for our citizens. 1. TXDot: Please consider disallowing motorists to make left turns out of the Tanglewood Village Shopping Center (located at 2110 W Slaughter Ln) and north onto Manchaca Road.  *Many accidents or near accidents have occurred at this treacherous intersection of Slaughter and Manchca due to careless and/or reckless drivers attempting to blindly head north on Manchaca Road from this busy shopping center.  Motorists must cross through four lanes of southbound traffic before they are able to merge north onto Manchaca. 2. TxD...

 It has been way to long since my last post and I have some many things to tell you, but I am just going to tell you about the thing most on my mind.  On June 18, I ended up having to work an hour and half later than planned because my boss ended up in a meeting. Which wasn't  a big deal I still had a little time before I need to be home to take a child to swim team. Then just as I was saying my goodbyes for the day, I had my bag on my shoulder and my keys in my hand, everything changed.  I heard the young man from one of the other trailer yell something but could not make it out. Then he yelled a second time and I heard " Call 911 someone has been hit".  Now when I hear this my brain switched from going home to someone needs help. I dropped my bag and keys and ran outside to see what had happened. I first saw the truck and then looked up the road and saw someone laying in the road. So that is were I ran. When I got to the bicyclist he was unconscious ...

If you have read my post before or if you know me, you know that I am a gardener. I had small gardens as a child and the last 15 years I have always had some type of garden. This year I feel behind on my garden (I have gotten spoiled by the long warm season we get in Texas). Between the weather and I am in the middle of replacing over half my garden beds. I feel that I should so much more in the ground, and some of that should happen this week. I have a lot of starts in the house just waiting for me to put dirt in the new beds. I am also working on an herb garden at the Farmers Market and I will be adding more plants too this week. I will also start working on putting in showcase garden at the Farmers Market for some of things growing at the farm that I became Farm Manager of this week.

There are only 17 day left in the school. It's hard to believe that we are almost at the end of an other school year, and with this there are a lot of things happening at the school were I volunteer. We just had the spring book fair, were I got to pick out books for all the kids in school. (There is church that meets in the school building on Sundays that buys the books for the kids.) The kid get their books when all their library books are turned in for the year. This is also the time of year when you get to see just how many books are in the library. I will be able to see how I need to reorganize the spinner rack, were we keep the more popular series. For example I am not sure if I have the right of room for the "Dairy of a wimpy kid" series right now. All the copies are normally checked out and when they are checked in it is never for very long. It's not uncommon for them to never make it to the spinner rack they are check out again so quickly. With the end ...