Its a great day

General Motors cars are now backed by the full faith and credit of the United States of America! It was extremely reassuring to hear the President of The United States hawking car warranties on national television. Do not know if it is true or not, but I've heard rumors that he is going to be the new spokesman for Sham-Wow!!! I can't wait!!

Corgi butts

 

Elizabeth

Oregon

House

Symmetry

is defined as the state of being balanced. Well I didn't look it up, but I think that is what it means more or less. Ying and Yang.
Several years ago I encountered one of the most painful times in my life....namely breaking three rib bones on my right side. For anyone that has never broken a rib, it is a very painful event. It is a gift that keeps on giving. The pain subsides for the most part after about 4-6 months, but takes about 12 months to go away completely.

I am now symmetrical!

Last Friday I got up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. While standing there, I realized that, as sweat poured off my forehead, I was going to pass out and or faint. Being the smart person that I am, I realized fainting in bed would be better than fainting in the bathroom with all of the very hard, impact resistant surfaces waiting to catch me.

Unfortunately for me, I only made it about half of the way to the bed before succumbing to whatever it was that was making me faint.....and no it wasn't alcohol...lol I was at the foot of the bed when I went down. I'm not sure if I tripped over the doggy stairs, or the bench at the end of the bed, or if I just landed on one of them, but the next thing I knew Karen was yelling at me asking me if I was alright? I made so much noise falling she thought someone was breaking into our bedroom.
For my part, I couldn't speak at first. It was all I could do to breathe.

Needless to say I have now broken ribs on my left side. How many you ask? Who knows? No point going to the doctors. He can't offer anything other than a $500 bill for x-rays that will only tell me what I already know! There is no treatment for broken ribs, other than Advil, which I can do without paying the doctors car payment.

Fremont Street

Last night we went to Fremont Street. I had heard that the Garage Boys were going to be there. Also I wanted to try out my new lens.

Before we got to see the Garage Boys, we were lucky enough to run into the USAF Band of the Golden West. They were awesome!










The rest of the pictures from that night are located on my Flickr Site.
We also got to see the Garage Boys band.









They were great as usual.


The rest of thier images can be seen here.


Tonight I brought my new 100mm f2.8 lens along with my 100-400mm IS L lens. I didn't really expect the 100-400mm lens to do too well because it is, or so I thought, not really suited for that type of environment because of the low lighting.

Here are a few of the shots with the 100-400 lens:






Over all I think it did very well considering it was somewhat out of its element.


These are from my new 100mm F2.8 lens. This lens, along with the 85mm are considered by many, to be some of the best portrait lens around. Here are a few samples from it.






Its a pretty fast lens which allows you to shoot in low light situations, and it is also very compact and light weight. Due to its relatively small size, it is a very discret lens for street photography also. I'm still learninig all of its characteristics, but so far I like it very much.

One problem I did encounter is "Red Eye" in both lenses. I'm not sure why that was, and althought it is easy to correct, I need to get that sorted out.

I didn't want to believe it,

but apparently it may happen. President Obama appears to be bent on releasing some Gitmo detainees into the United States! Up to 20 are under consideration to be released to U.S. soil. Among them 17 Chinese Muslims. It appears that some will also stand trial in civilian courts also. The icing on the cake is Obama's plan to disarm airline pilots! May God have mercy on him if their is another attack because of these actions, because I will not have any!!!

On a lessor topic, but still important, Democratic Senator Chris Dodd admitted today, after denying it, that he was indeed the Senator that put language into the bill that allowed AIG to pay out 176 million dollars to top employees!!!!! First he denied it, of course, but he was more or less caught with his hand in the cookie jar, so to speak. Is it a coincidence that Chris Dodd, and many other congressmen, received hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions and then went on to approve billions of dollars of taxpayer money to AIG?????

Back to Fremont Street

Now that it is getting a bit warmer out here in the evening, we ventured out to Fremont Street on Friday.

A security guard keeps a watchful eye on the crowd.


Here he is escorting an overly intoxicated guest to a cab.

One of the bands playing tonight was "Class Act". They were good, playing mostly 70s, 80s, and 90s music.






Carl was out as usual.



This band is Louie Louie.

I joined

the meetup.com website the other day. This site allows you to join different groups that interest you. I joined the Southern Nevada Photographers group. The general purpose is to allow members to set up events. Ihad posted that I was going to the Clark County Wetlands Preserve on Thursday. One of the members replied that he would like to go also, so we met there and did some more...you guessed it, BIRD SPOTTING!

What a nice day.

Sunny and 63F. Off to the park!


An American Wigeon.


The ugly duckling.... a Commerant.


A Great Egret resting on the island on Lake Sunset.


People enjoying the day fishing.


Where all the birds hang out.


A Redhead Duck.


More fishing.


On top of the world!





I'm not sure what he is running from.


A patriotic House Finch!




This might be a Verdin, then again it may not be. Hard to tell from this angle.


A Gambrels Quail acting as an look out. Several of them perched up in the trees over the group of Gambrels. Yes they do fly, kinda like a turkey flies....lol


Here is three of them standing guard.


Here is one landing/crashing to the ground.


This is a piss poor picture because I coudn't focus my lens fast enough!





A walk in the park.


Comming in for a landing:


This *might* be a Black-Capped Gnatcatcher. If so, while not rare here, it is uncommon.






Volleyball anyone?