(c) Nicole Cousins

APPLEBEE’s: TRACY RESIDENTS: A “Flapjack Fundraiser Breakfast” is being held for my niece Nicole Cousins to help pay her medical bills following recent urgent surgery. At APPLEBEE’s *MARCH 3*, 8:00am-10:00am, cost $5.00 with Full Proceeds going to Nicole. Location is 3060 Naglee Rd, Tracy CA 95304, (209) 834-0360. (Applebees is Nicole’s employer). Update: Please note date correction: Sat. March 3, 2012 (not 8th as originally posted).

One of their employees says: “Applebee’s in Tracy is kindly hosting this event to raise money for a long time employee and wonderful person- Nicole Cousins. Nicole has Hydrocephalus and recently had major brain surgery. Her insurance only covered $500 of an $84,000+ hospital bill. Her friends and co-workers at Applebee’s are trying to help make a dent in this enormous hospital bill. Please help us make an impact!” Cost is only $5!

Love where you live.

Live where you love.

Count your blessings.

I am thankful to God that my husband and I live near our children and grandchildren, and that we live in a lovely part of the world. No matter where you live, there is always something beautiful to see, and always a reason to choose  to be thankful and grateful.

God bless you.

In Buellton, California a historic but abandoned STREET CAR DINER is soon to be torn down due to rezoning. I stopped by at twilight the other evening to take some photos but it was almost too dark for my amateur camera skills. 

BACK STORY: 1940′s: The sides of the diner were once STREET CARS in Huntington Beach, CA. Edward Mullen (a railway steward) brought them up from southern California and built Mullens Dining Cars, which only lasted 3 years due to changes in the location of Highway 101.

“The diners main attraction, the two early 1900′s Type-B Huntington Standards street cars, built by the St. Louis Car Co. for Henry Huntington’s Los Angeles Railway, are now in need of a new home.” [OldStreetCarDiner.com]

The land is no longer zoned for commercial use, and vandalism has destroyed past remodeling attempts, so now it is due for the scrap heap unless the current owners can find someone with the means to move it to a new location. {Couldn’t they get Historical Landmark designation and funding? Just wondering….}

Local paper, Santa Ynez Valley Journal, did an article and took some interesting interior photos here. The old dining cars have been used for tv commercials and professional photo shoots. (I will have to keep my eyes opened for those!)

Local TV station KCOY news article with contact info here.

It would be a shame to see this local landmark and icon disappear. Here is hoping someone comes to its rescue soon. (The deadline was 6 months, and the above news stories were in April and May 2011. It is now February 2012). Wishing, hoping and praying for a miracle for this great piece of local history.

A google search turned up this old photo, not sure who to give photo credit to, as it was not clear in the picture:

Google Images

My husband and I took a spontaneous drive the other day and ended up in Lompoc CA, where we drove down Ocean Ave and took a right turn on Ocean Park road, where we saw marshland at high tide… 

We could not actually get to the beach itself at this time, but on this February day it was quiet, peaceful, and we were the only ones there. They also have a gazebo, benches, picnic tables and restrooms. Lots of driftwood floating by too.

Leaving Ocean Park, we took a right turn back onto Ocean Ave and kept on going until it dead-ended at Surf Beach (where there also happens to be an Amtrak).

At Surf Beach the wind was blowing and it was cold, but the sun was mostly shining. We walked right down to the beach where the only other people there were two moms with their kids. It felt like a private beach. Parts of it were fenced off by Vandenberg Air Force Base, but there was still plenty of space for us to take a walk…

Such a quiet, serene beach, with smooth pristine sand that shone like glass. Now that we have found this beach, we will make a point of going back again someday.

Note: Signs say that the beach is closed from March-September for Snowy Plover Nesting season and there is no tresspassing. (To read sign: Click on photo to enlarge).

And yes, sadly, this is the same place where a UC Santa Barbara student was attacked and killed by a great white shark in 2010.

Fun Old Photos 1900-1940′S: including Teddy Roosevelt visiting the Surf Depot in 1903 and other train and Surf Beach pictures. Also a 1977 train wreck.

Lompoc CA: Ocean Beach County Park and Surf Beach (c)Photos by Tricia. TriciasThings.wordpress.com

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The Santa Ynez Valley (Santa Barbara County) is one of my favorite places to take pictures. Being an amateur photographer is easy when you are out in nature because the Creator/God does all the work! I do not have a fancy camera, just an old point-and-shoot, but even so, you can see what a unique and inviting place the Santa Ynez Valley is.

All photos by Tricia. Copyright (c) TriciasThings.wordpress.com

If you use any images, please give source credit and link back to this page. Thank you.

PHOTO DESCRIPTIONS: CALIFORNIA CENTRAL COAST – SANTA YNEZ VALLEY: (1,2) Solvang Trout Farm, (3) A hidden park in Solvang, (4) Classic Organic Farm in Gaviota or Buellton, (5) Farm Equipment on road outside of Nojoqui Falls, (6) Mossy Oak taken on Alisal Road in Solvang, (7) Tangled trees in Hans Christian Andersen Park in Solvang, (8) Nojoqui Waterfall in Nojoqui Park Solvang — during a very dry season!

(c) TriciasThings.wordpress.com

I like the YES WE LIKE TO BITE! sign.

Ostrichland in Buellton CA

Ostriches are such unique looking creatures!

(c) TriciasThings.wordpress.com

So are ostriches birds or related to dinosaurs? Wikipedia says though flightless, they are the largest living species of bird. Other research shows they are related to dinosaurs as well!

Size: 8-9 feet tall and 350 pounds, an ostrich can run 35 miles per hour. They can live to be up to 75 years old! Source: OstrichlandUSA.com

Ostriches are native to Africa. Emus are native to Australia.

We enjoyed our visit to Ostrichland (we call it the Ostrich farm) and if you have young children, the farm sometimes suggests they feed a smaller Emu instead (though emus are not that much smaller).

]]> http://triciasthings.wordpress.com/2012/02/03/photos-ostriches/feed/ 0 sweetrascal ostrichland_we_bite_txt-tt ostrichland_group_txt-tt http://triciasthings.wordpress.com/2012/01/21/child-slaves-and-chocolate/ http://triciasthings.wordpress.com/2012/01/21/child-slaves-and-chocolate/#comments Sat, 21 Jan 2012 18:31:12 +0000 Tricia's Journals http://triciasthings.wordpress.com/?p=1856 Continue reading →]]>

Photo Credit

Child slaves and chocolate. Those two things should not be in the same sentence. In fact, child and slaves should not be in the same sentence. But children should enjoy chocolate as a special treat, something to look forward to, not associate it with hazardous labor, pain, abuse, and sadness.

World Vision wrote an article: Is chocolate your guilty pleasure?

Thousands of West African children are forced into labor for cocoa, chocolate’s primary ingredient. Long, punishing hours, dangerous tools and machetes. Robbed of their education. The International Labor Rights Forum is committed to public awareness and corporate campaigns to stop the scourge of forced child labor in the cocoa industry.

Smash The Man tells one child’s story of being beaten with bicycle chains, sleeping on a wooden plank with no mattress, subsisting on a diet of bananas, working sun up to sun down.

“Green Tea” Party says that the cocoa from Hershey’s* Chocolates have been produced under harmful and abusive forced labor conditions. They say that “a number of smaller chocolate companies in the US have been sourcing Fair Trade Certified™ cocoa and building relationships with cocoa farmers to ensure that these farmers earn enough to support their families, invest in their futures, and send their children to school.”

In addition, some larger global chocolate corporations are beginning to source cocoa beans that have been certified to meet particular labor, social, and environmental standards. Hershey* is not among them. They continue to exploit children as cocoa slaves in order to cut their costs. Of course this also causes a reduction of US jobs.

THE GOOD NEWS: Divine Chocolate USA! “At the heart of Divine’s heavenly tasting chocolate there is a unique story. Not only do the Kuapa Kokoo farmers’ receive a Fair Trade price for their cocoa, but they also own 45% of the company, and therefore have a direct influence over how the company is run and share in the profits from the chocolate. Owning Divine gives the farmers of the Kuapa Kokoo cooperative not just additional income, but also knowledge and power – the opportunity to grow and flourish is in their hands.”

FREE PHONE APP for Iphone and Android: FREE2WORK APP: “Be a conscious consumer! Learn how your favorite brands relate to trafficking and other labor abuses. Free2Work provides consumers with information on forced and child labor for the brands and products they love. Free2Work grades companies on a scale of “A” to “F” based on their efforts to prevent and to address forced and child labor.”

*UPDATE: CNN Freedom Project just posted that Hershey has made an announcement that they are trying to focus on this issue now. Time will tell… [blog update 2/1/12]

“Consumerism is a social and economic order based on fostering a desire to purchase goods and services in ever greater amounts.“  Because we live in a nation of free choice, we think: I work hard, I deserve this. I need instant gratification. Spending is way more fun than saving. It is my right and good fortune as an American citizen, living in the wealthiest country on the planet. I am entitled.

In America it is all about consumption. The more we have, the more we want. We feel our worth and our acceptance through our ‘things’. But the ‘buyers high’ won’t last and we all have to pay the piper eventually. Spending is a habit and we all know how hard it is to break a habit!

We treat shopping as a recreational activity: ”Hey, let’s go shopping!” Culturally we are taught we need more and more belongings. Socially we feel we need to keep up with the Joneses. Money is power, therefore the things we buy with our money will buy us a feeling of power and greater influence with our peers, right?

So we fill up our closets and our garages, and the rooms in our homes are stuffed with clutter. Some of us have so many ‘things’ that we rent storage units for the excess, or we cannot park our automobiles in our garages. (Not to mention all the post-consumer waste, such as the packaging that goes into the landfill or off to the recycling plant.)

Even after spring cleaning or a yard sale, we still possess too much stuff. Or does it possess us? What are we really filling ourselves up with when we collect things? What should we be filling ourselves up with?

Do you want to really feel rich? Read this true story by Eddie Ogan.

Quotes: Less stuff and less debt = more freedom and more happiness. A cluttered home = a cluttered brain. It is better to give than to receive. Simplify, simplify, simplify!

Personally, I really want the joy, freedom and clarity that comes from simplifying and giving. I have started doing better, but want to simplify my life even more. The more I give away (or sell to raise funds for global needs) the better I feel. We have downsized to less than 1/2 of what we owned before. But we could do more. We can always try harder and do more.

P.S. I am sure you can come up with a gazillion ways we overspend that don’t even involve shopping, including letting the water run while we wash dishes. Leaving the lights on when we leave a room. Hopping in the car to go down the street, when we could easily walk or bike there. Throwing clothes and towels in the laundry after only 1 or 2 uses. Those things cost money too. Those things are over-consuming also. But being ‘green’ is a big subject that deserves it’s own post sometime.

BIBLE FOOD FOR THOUGHT: Jesus replied, “If you want to be perfect*, go sell everything you own! Give the money to the poor, and you will have riches in heaven. Then come and be my follower.” (Matthew 19:21 Contemporary English Version).

*have that spiritual maturity that comes with self-sacrificing character. (Amplified version).

News Note: The reason I had to write about this subject today is because two news articles have been bothering me the last few days: 12 million dollar home bulldozed, and bridal gowns destroyed.

and photos of kids.

I had so much fun taking these pictures:

Oh Happy Day!

Hans Christian Andersen Park Solvang CA

Tree Roots at Hans Christian Andersen Park

Concrete to help stop erosion at the Park

The grandkids at the Park

Hans Christian Andersen Park in Solvang CA is a very large park where we like to take our grandkids for a ‘hike’ and to play on the playground. There are so many great things to photograph there; I only posted a few, but could have done hundreds!