We went to the botanic garden yesterday and enjoyed the magnificent orchids on display. The two pictures below were of a couple of prize winners. Both are as beautiful as they are exotic.

The annual gathering of the Southern California Orchid Society is this weekend. We are members of the South Coast Botanical Gardens and since our facility is host to the event, we plan to attend today. All I can say is the show and the orchids and flowers on sale last year were breathtaking. I took this shot last year. Click the image for the large view.

I’ll be posting today’s pictures here later.

In a few days, I am getting an updated Canon Digital Rebel XTi camera. My current camera, a Canon Digital Rebel 300D, is still a great camera and takes beautiful pictures. I’m not exactly going to retire it, but likely it will be in my camera bag as a standby camera (like with a telephoto or wide-angle lens). All my old lenses will work with the new camera. The old camera can be at the ready should I need it during the next air show or vacation or whatever.

I’m so excited. I’ll be here on Monday.

Here is an excerpt from a review at Digital Photography Review:

Almost exactly three years since Canon changed the digital SLR market forever (with the $1,000 EOS 300D) they announced the third generation of their affordable entry level series, the EOS 400D (Digital Rebel XTi). This new camera follows the design of the EOS 350D, being very compact and relatively lightweight but not compromising on manual controls or in-use performance. The headline changes are another two megapixel step up (to ten megapixels), the nine-point AF sensor from the EOS 30D, a new dust removal system which includes anti-static surface coatings, low-pass filter vibration and software based dust pattern removal. Less important but just as noticeable are the removal of the status LCD, replaced instead by a camera settings screen on the now larger 2.5″ LCD monitor and the eye proximity sensor just below the viewfinder to turn this off when composing your shot.

Here’s some interesting stuff about the current litigation of the Washington D.C. Gun Case: Washington D.C.’s challenge to the recent Federal Court ruling that their gun ban is unconstitutional asserts that its gun ban is constitutional because:

1. It only applies to handguns
2. The Second Amendment only restrains the federal government, not states or local governments like D.C.
3. D.C.’s gun ban is reasonable because it has saved “thousands of lives.”

According to the DCGunCase blog, Bob Levy in Legal Times (PDF) makes the following observations about D.C.’s three claims:

1. Not only does the ban apply to handguns, but restrains rife and shotgun owners to disassemble or lock their unloaded firearms, thus rendering them virtually useless for self-defense. D.C.’s Mayor Fenty weakly makes the claim that these guns are suitable for home defense. One judge in the case observed that the city could have enacted a complete gun ban claiming that sabers were still legal.
2. D.C.’s claim that they are a “local” government and should be exempt from the second amendment fails because the Constitution expressly grants to Congress, not a state, plenary legislative power over all matters whatsoever in the nation’s capital. Because the Second Amendment indisputably applies to the federal government, it therefore applies to the District, a federal enclave.
3. Has the D.C. gun ban saved “thousands of lives?” Before the District banned handguns in 1976, its murder rate had been declining. But soon afterward, the rate climbed to the highest of all large U.S. cities. It also rose relative to nearby Maryland and Virginia, as well as relative to other cities with more than 500,000 people. During the 31-year life of the ban, with the exception of a few years during which the city’s murder rate ranked second or third, there have been more killings per capita in Washington, D.C., than in any other major city. The rate climbed as high as 81 murders per 100,000 inhabitants in 1991 - triple the pre-ban levels. As of 2005, the last year for which I have data, the murder rate was still 32 percent above the 1976 level.

We’re going to keep tuned in to the DCGunCase blog since any landmark decision by SCOTUS will affect gun ordinances everywhere.

Asian lilies are noted for large flowers, vigorous growth, and sweet perfume, ‘Casa Blanca,’ an Asian Lily variety, is a standout among them. The huge flowers are pure, gleaming white and delicately flocked in a way that adds richness and texture. When these lilies are in our vase, we find excuses to wander nearby.

When we go to the range to practice, we generally share a target. We use one for the revolvers and generally change it out when we switch to the 9mm pistols. Most of the time when a target gets perforated to the point of not being able to see where the rounds are going, we will paste on one of those fluorescent glows-where-you-hit-it targets. For shotguns, we put up 2 x 3 foot silhouette targets.

Although we generally know who is hitting where on the target, there is some ambiguity. At the end of the video here you will see that even though there are shots all over the target, we are collectively getting pretty good at hitting the center a lot of the time.

Saturday, during our visit to the cliffs at Point Vicente, we saw this flight of California Brown Pelicans soaring along the shoreline in the updrafts.

The four lead pelicans are seen in the image below. You can see the entire flight of ten by clicking on the image. See this article for a close up of a California Brown.

The eleventh bird in the large picture is a seagull who was also soaring the cliffs.

OK - pardon the paraphrase, but after a shoot, we religiously lay out our equipment for cleaning and maintenance. On nice days, we do this outside on the patio swing. Here, you see the guns we shot today. The handguns on the left, from top to bottom, are S&W 908 9mm pistol, Glock 26 9mm pistol, S&W 686 .357 magnum revolver and S&W 442 .38 special revolver. The shotguns are both Remington 870s - one a synthetic 7-round capacity 12 gauge and the other is a youth 20 gauge 5 round capacity.

After all the cleaning was done, the guns, now clean and lubricated, were put into their secure containers until next week at the range. All of them, that is, except for a personal firearm that we each keep close at hand.

Overnight, we had considerable rainfall - at least for drought-stricken Southern California. Damsel and I knew that there would be clear air down by the ocean, as is typical after rainfall here. When we drove to the Palos Verdes Peninsula, we were not disappointed.

Damsel took this picture of Point Vicente with the Lighthouse to the left and Catalina Island in the distance. Click on the image below for the deluxe full-screen version.

From Wayne LaPierre, NRA Exec. VP:

Dear Fellow NRA Member,

On Friday, September 21, from 8:30-5:00, NRA is holding its Celebration of American Values at the Capital Hilton in Washington, D.C. The event is being covered live by C-SPAN. Please be sure to watch this important presentation. Also, please be sure to call C-SPAN immediately and tell the station that you’re enjoying the coverage so that they’ll continue to carry this and other NRA events. Please, also be sure to be on the lookout for news reports of this important event on other major networks. Thank you very much.

I presume that those times are Eastern. I don’t have TV access where I am now, so I will get Damsel to check my theory.

Update: Damsel reported that both C-SPAN channels on DirecTV were showing content other than the NRA.

Whenever we take the Catalina Express to or from Catalina, we never fail to see several California Sea Lions basking on the harbor navigation buoys. Damsel took this picture as we passed into the harbor returning to the San Pedro Catalina Terminal.

Pinnipeds are protected under the Marine Mammal Protection act, and organizations such as the Marine Mammal Care Center at Fort MacArthur (we are supporting members) provide rescue, rehab and restoration to the habitat for injured critters.

It’s not uncommon for sea lions to rest on buoys; they will also often gather at marinas and wharves. These man-made environments provide them safety from their natural predators: orcas and white sharks.

You can click on the image for a larger view.

I know that we’ve been putting up a lot of images from our recent trip to Avalon, but we took over 800 pictures and many of them came out quite good (if I do say so myself). We will probably be posting these over the next few weeks in the afterglow of a wonderful island getaway.

This beautiful tile mural is over the box office in the foyer of the famous Casino in the City of Avalon on Catalina Island. She has been restored form the dark days of the 60s to the 80’s when this gorgeous structure fell into disrepair. Luckily, the whole place is looking good, although some places around the building could use a power wash. Nonetheless, this is one of the several wonderful aquatic murals in the Casino’s foyer. Click on the image below to see a larger version.