Pasco Safety Town

Pasco Safety Town is a child-sized town designed to provide a complete hands-on safety education for children. Safety Town focuses on children ages 5-8 (K-2nd grade). The town has paved streets, working traffic signals, miniature buildings, and even a railroad crossing, all designed to be as authentic as possible.

Public and private schools and children's groups visit Safety Town as a field trip during the week. The children are taught by volunteers who have been trained by education and safety professionals. Safety topics covered include:

Pedestrian safety
Bicycle safety
Water safety
Fire safety
Electrical safety
The right way to call 911
Safety around animals
Stranger danger
Using safety belts

Safety Town is also used for bicycle safety rodeos, and to train adults such as school crossing guards.

Pasco Safety Town is located between Hays Road and Shady Hills Road on State Road 52, about eight miles east of U.S. Highway 19.

Contact info:

Pasco Safety Town, P.O. Box 1285, New Port Richey, FL 34656-1285. Phone: 813-929-1203.

Meetup.com

"Whatever Your Interest. Wherever You Are." That's the motto of a great website that helps to connect people with like interests. It's called Meetup.com. You create a profile, pick groups you might be interested in, and they will send announcements for upcoming events or meetings. You find groups by topic and zip code or city. If you can think of it, there is probably a group for it. If you are new to the area or are just having a difficult time connecting with people, give Meetup a shot. You never know. There's groups for stay-at-home moms, travelers, movie buffs, readers, computer enthusiasts, crafts people, outdoors people. You name it. As with any social website, always use a little caution and don't give out too much information.

So get out there and meet some people!

Operation Pit Snip

Although late in announcing this great program, I'm going to mention it anyway. Operation PitSnip, a project of the Coalition for Animal Welfare/West Central Florida, Pasco County Animal Services, and the Friends of the Pasco County Library System, is offering a $40 discount off of the spaying and neutering of any pit bull dog owned by a Pasco or Hernando resident.

Call one of these participating clinics for an appointment:

PETLUV SPAY AND NEUTER CLINIC
7346 Broad Street ▪ BROOKSVILLE
(352) 799-9990

PAWS SPAY AND NEUTER CLINIC
11720 US 19 ▪ Port Richey
(727) 819-1910

SPAY PASCO
32347 State Road 52 ▪ San Antonio
(352) 588-2132

ANIMAL COALITION OF TAMPA
1719 Lemon Street ▪ Tampa
(813) 250-3900

The program ends February 29, 2008.

Reduce The Catalogs You Receive in the Mail

There's a great website out there that enables you to reduce or even eliminate the massive amounts of catalogs you receive in the mail. The site is called Catalog Choice and is a free service. Catalog Choice is a sponsored project of the Ecology Center and is endorsed by different environmental groups. All you need to do is log on, create a user id, and then you are ready to cancel or reduce the catalogs you do not want. What a concept!! Eliminate junk mail and help the environment. As of this writing, "the Catalog Choice community is presently 574,853 persons strong, having already opted out of 7,095,217 catalogs."

To view the website and sign up, just click on the "Mail Order Catalog Canceling Service" under Environmental at the right of the blog page.

Want To Quit Smoking?

Still smoking and want to quit? Did you know that the Florida Department of Health and the American Cancer Society offer a toll-free telephone-based tobacco use cessation Quitline for adults and youth? In Pasco County, the program is administered through the county health department. The program consists of pro-active counseling sessions, self-help materials, and coupons for pharmacotherapy assistance. The program is available in both English and Spanish.

The Florida Quit-for-Life Line is toll free and ready to take your call. Give it a try at 1-877-822-6669.