Ang's Journal

hotpantsgalore started a peach stand last weekend. She bought a tent shelter, a folding table, a cooler (for drinks for sale), some signs ("FREDERICKSBURG PEACHES"), & 5 half-bushels of peaches. Then she found a place in front of an out of business Chuck E. Cheese & started selling. 20 half-bushel boxes & 2 days later, she had paid off her initial investment, made a few hundred bucks, & gotten bitten by the Peach Bug.

Now she's waking up early (WHAT?), negotiating deals directly with the peach orchards, hiring former classmates, & opening up one, maybe two new stands for this weekend. My fiance now has scheduled to purchase 50 half-bushels of peaches for the weekend. At about 65 peaches per half-bushel box, that's over 3,000 peaches.

I, on the other hand, have been banished to East Texas, where the high temperature today hit 106 degrees F. Working on a former creosote treatment pit, basking in the mothball smell of naphthalene, I caught myself thinking a few times, Man, a fresh peach sure would taste great right now....

In other news, I had chicken-fried steak for dinner & it was not entirely awful.

Wow, some people never learn. hotpantsgalore, not having had enough fun with the high winds & the flat tires in Galveston last April, has signed up to do another triathlon with Team in Training! She is going to compete in the Cap Tex Olympic Triathlon on May 30, 2011. Yeah.... swim 1,500 meters, bike 40 kilometers, & run 10 kilometers in the sweaty heat of a Central Texas summer. That sounds like a lot of suffering to me!

Then again, leukemia & other blood cancers still cause even more suffering. And Team in Training is an incredible weapon in the fight against blood cancers - having raised nearly one billion dollars for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society since the Team was founded in 1988.

As always, TnT only works when family & friends support the cause by making tax-deductible donations through the participant's fundraising website. HPG knows that economic times are still tough - so she is offering a little bribe. The first ten people to contribute to her page (any amount) will receive one hand-crafted Haiku, written with love by HPG. Who doesn't like Haiku?

Any amount.

$250.
$100.
$50.
$25.
$10.
Even $5!

Even if you don't want to contribute right now, you should bookmark HPG's fundraising page, if only to read her blog entries. Last year's blog was some of the more amusing writing ever on the joys of endurance training. I'm sure this year will be equally entertaining, as HPG writes in her frank style, mixed with poems:

Months of hard training
Made possible by support
From friends, far and wide.