I can’t believe I ate the whole thing - so say some of the 1970’s Alka Seltzer commercials.

At the behest of a celebrity chef on TV, Damsel and I set about grinding up some beef brisket today and made these huge cheeseburgers. She got about half of hers down, but I trooped on and consumed the entire meal. My burger was topped with lettuce, tomato, avocado, sauteed mushrooms, onion, mustard and mayonnaise. On the side was a rather healthy serving of butternut squash.

Now this was a whopper - that mess they crank out at Booger King can’t hold a candle to the meal we had today.

Construction of a real whopper: grill, melt the Irish cheddar, stack and serve.

Buzz Lightyear of Toy Story 2 fame

Story from NASA:

Buzz Lightyear to Soar with Discovery

Seven astronauts who will fly into orbit aboard space shuttle Discovery will have comfortable seats for the climb into space. An eighth space ranger won’t have a seat at all. In fact, he will be packed tight inside a box and won’t even get to enjoy the ride up.

But it’s nothing veteran spaceman Buzz Lightyear can’t overcome.

The good news is that he’ll have some sports shows to listen to, along with a host of jerseys that have been to the Champs Elysees in Paris for the Tour de France and to the Super Bowl.

More accustomed to soaring among the galaxies on fold-out wings and a backpack rocket, Lightyear will take to space on Discovery’s STS-124 mission stowed inside a locker in Discovery’s crew compartment. The 12-inch-tall action figure is flying as part of a partnership between NASA and Disney Parks to encourage students to pursue studies in science, technology and mathematics, one of NASA’s main educational goals.

This spring, my little potted gardenia bush is producing many more buds than last spring. There are so many and they are very fragrant when they bloom. And pretty too . . .

We got comments on Damsel’s post, ‘My Shiny Girl Gun,’ from Mark and Sig94 regarding the grip on her Para Warthog. They were concerned about how well they could grip the pistol, given its small size. I answered by posting a couple of photos in the comments and thought it would be good to share them here along with the comments so everyone can see.

Mark said,

How is it to shoot? I’ve been thinking of getting one this year and was worried about how short the grip was. It seems about like my Walther PPK/S in length but with a .45 I’m a bit worried.

Sig94 said,

Same concern here. My Beretta Mini-Cougar is a great little piece as long as the standard mag is used with the pinkie rest. The other mag is shorter and my pinkie feels all naked and afraid hanging off the bottom of the grip.

Cap’n Bob said,

Damsel can grip the pistol without the extended magazine since her hands are small. I, on the other hand (no pun intended), find it’s more comfy with the extension. Fortunately, both magazine styles are available. And this little gun kicks too. Without the extension, it wants to jump out of my hands.

She doesn’t get to do this very often, but yesterday, we took ‘Bear’ for a drive to several stops on the Palos Verdes Peninsula. She enjoyed exploring the Neptune Fountain at the Palos Verdes Estates civic center, the Point Vicente Interpretive Center (shown in the picture) and a couple of other stops on the peninsula.

I think she was happy, but it must have tired her out - all that doggie exploration - because she slept most of the morning today.

Damsel took these pictures today when we were driving on the Palos Verdes Peninsula. We started out just going for a holiday drive, but these targets of opportunity presented themselves for Damsel’s camera. From peacocks to pelicans and Stearman to Boeing, we saw it all today. She imaged more than 500 jpegs with her digital. Very difficult picking four pix let alone one . . .

Click any image for a bigger view.

We missed target practice a couple of weeks ago. So, to make up for it, we took some extra ammo and brought seven firearms:

1. Smith & Wesson 442 .38 spl +P
2. Smith & Wesson 908s 9mm
3. Glock 26 9mm
4. Glock 30 .45 ACP
5. Para Warthog .45 ACP
6. Remington 870 20 ga
7. Remington 870 12 ga 6+1

I took this picture of the recycle bin after we broke down the ammo boxes. To be fair, this bunch includes the ammo boxes we used to reload the magazines for the pistols after cleaning them today.      Click to zoomography.

I wonder what the dumpster divers think when peeking in our recycle bins on trash day.

Reggie has been in the zoo for a year now.

We followed the story about Reggie, the suburban alligator, almost from the start:

Alligators in the Sewers - Still!
Alligators in the Sewers - Part IV
Alligators in the Sewers - Part V
Alligators in the Sewers - Part VI
Alligators in the Sewers - Part VII
Alligators in the Sewers - Epilogue?
Alligators in the Sewers - Reggie, Where Ya Been?
Alligators in the Sewers - The Epilogue

Unfortunately, some of the earlier posts (Parts I, II and III) were lost when we converted from our old blog format to WordPress.

The story started when a San Pedro resident introduced the alligator to Machado Lake in a Harbor City Park when he decided that he couldn’t keep his exotic pet any longer. Authorities later traced the animal to the resident and brought appropriate charges.

The alligator, however, managed to elude potential captors for a couple of years and laid low in the park’s lake. The ‘gator became a celebrity in his own right as sightings by park visitors continued to be reported.

A year ago, a team from the Los Angeles Zoo managed to snare the reclusive reptile.

Here’s a report on the health and welfare of our favorite ‘gator from the Daily Breeze:

Continue reading » Alligators in the Sewers - One Year After Capture

I know that our men and women in the Armed Services have access to a lot of necessary battlefield equipment. I like to use the term ‘toys’ because, even though they are equipment designed for military purposes, some of them are really neat.

But this ‘toy’ seen here is the real thing - an actual Humvee set up to be used for entertainment purposes, publicity and amusement - literally, a toy.

This Hummer is practical only for being used as a recruiting tool. It hardly has the paint color to be used in any theater of operations, and I’m certain that the awesome high power sound system isn’t going to scare off any enemy.

But it is a beautiful work of military art. You have to envy the guys that get assigned to the care, feeding and operations of this unique military vehicle.

Photographed at Torrance, California, in the static display area after the annual Armed Forces Day Parade. The city hosts the parade every year; this is the 49th consecutive year.

One of our favorite weblogs, Blogs of War posted a great YouTube video of the 2008 Torrance Armed Forces Day Parade.

I knew it would be just a matter of time until somebody would do this.

Gunpedia is a wiki that was created in January 2006. A wiki is a website that anyone can edit and improve, sort of like Wikipedia, only this is more specific - it’s for the documentation of just about anything about guns. Right now, you can edit 347 different articles about this subject, and can create many, many more.

On the front page there is a section for:

• Monthly Featured Article
• Monthly Featured Image
• User of the Month
• Newest Pages

Also featured is an alphanumeric index to specific firearms pages. If you don’t see your favorite weapon there, you can add it yourself! I looked at the index, and it appears that there will be a lot of work to do.

There are many special-interest wikis in cyberspace, not the least of which is the IMFDB or Internet Movie Firearms Database, another very interesting wiki.

This past weekend, we celebrated Armed Forces Day by visiting some of our military folks who brought some static displays and military equipment to show off to the public. The Army brought this UH-60 Blackhawk for all to sit in, touch, photograph and just plain gawk.

While I gawked, I remembered something that a 70’s news anchor, Harry Reasoner, said when he compared airplane and helicopter pilots with the following statements:

The thing is, helicopters are different from planes. An airplane by its nature wants to fly, and if not interfered with too strongly by unusual events or by a deliberately incompetent pilot, it will fly.

A helicopter does not want to fly. It is maintained in the air by a variety of forces and controls working in opposition to each other, and if there is any disturbance in this delicate balance the helicopter stops flying, immediately and disastrously. There is no such thing as a gliding helicopter.

That is why being a helicopter pilot is so different from being an airplane pilot, and why, in generality, airplane pilots are open, clear-eyed, buoyant extroverts and helicopter pilots are brooders, introspective anticipators of trouble. They know if something bad has not happened, it is about to.

- - Commentary by Harry Reasoner, February 16, 1971

As you may or may not know, I am a pilot - I’m rated in both airplanes and helicopters. While I agree with Mr. Reasoner’s basic corollary, I can see that it only applies to a pilot while flying a particular aircraft type.

For example, while flying airplanes under visual conditions, I do a little drill by identifying potential emergency landing sites around the airplane - an alert, but mostly casual drill. But, when piloting a helicopter, I find myself making slight course changes in order to be in a position to autorotate to a landing site. Sort of like a stepping-stone approach to navigation. It’s a bit more intense then the airplane drill.

When not flying, I like to think that I can be as extroverted or introspective as conditions warrant.

I’ve had this Gardenia for at least three years. Every spring it blooms, but this spring it is going to produce many of these beautiful, fragrant flowers since there are bunches of buds this year. For the previous couple of years, I only got a small handful of blooms.

There are hundreds of varieties of Gardenias; this one has a very strong and pleasant fragrance, but I’m not sure of it’s exact subspecies.

Click on the image to the right to see the 800×600 version.

This is a general description of Gardenias from WikiPedia:

Gardenia is a genus of about 250 species of flowering plants in the family Rubiaceae, native to the tropical and subtropical regions of Africa, southern Asia, Australasia and Oceania.

The genus was named by Carl Linnaeus after Dr. Alexander Garden (1730-1791), Scottish-born American naturalist.

They are evergreen shrubs and small trees growing to 1-15 m tall. The leaves are opposite or in whorls of three or four, 5-50 cm long and 3-25 cm broad, dark green and glossy with a leathery texture. The flowers are solitary or in small clusters, white, or pale yellow, with a tubular-based corolla with 5-12 lobes (’petals’) from 5-12 cm diameter. Flowering is from about mid-spring to mid-summer and many species are strongly scented.