Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to everyone! Sarah and I have been in Virginia Beach for 2 days now. After a long drive down the coast, we arrived on Wednesday night and had a sushi dinner while Mom went to choir. Yesterday was Christmas Eve, and after a morning trip to the gym, Dad and I went to pick up Denise. She arrived safe and sound (we all managed to avoid the nasty weather this trip), and we settled in for an afternoon of wrapping gifts and making egg nog (not surprisingly, the quality of the wrapping is proportionate to the amount of egg nog remaining in the bottle).

Last night, we went out for what Denise thinks is the 10th anniversary of the Olivieri/Kapsha Christmas Eve trip to the bar. Sarah, Mom, Dad, Denise, and I went for the early shift for drinks and seafood. As Mom left to go to church, Uncle Tom showed up. Shortly after, Aunt Laura came with Mom-Mom, Chris, and Elysia. They ate dinner while the rest of us continued to drink and munch on dessert. After dinner, Chris, Elysia, Sarah, Denise, and I came back to 43rd St. Sarah stayed in, but the other four of us went for a walk up and down 43rd St, which has become one of THOSE NEIGHBORHOODS where every house is decked out with ridiculous amounts of Christmas lights. Here are some of those shots (click on the image will take you to an album of more photos):


our house







Merry Christmas!

NYC at Christmastime

This morning, we left New York City after a brief trip to see some shows and the city at the holidaytime. Here are some shots...


The Chrysler Building from near Union Square



Central Park, sans people!



Now we're in Virginia Beach, getting ready for Christmas!

Happy to you!

SoundField in Joshua Tree

I took a drive today into the desert: Joshua Tree National Park. My main reason for going was to make some test recordings using UCI's SoundField mic, a special microphone that can create three-dimensional recordings. I took along the camera, and here are some shots from the outing:

Me and the SoundField, looking thoughtful:


Crazy cacti:


The sun sets:


Cars pass:


The Prius enjoys the dusk:


The stars come out:


A message for Sarah:

sigalert

sigalert.com is the traffic monitoring website for the LA and San Diego area. It's got all of the highways rated by traffic, and accidents are rated with little diamonds. Yellow diamonds are for small hazards, orange are for car accidents, and red are for accidents with emergency vehicles.

Today, it's raining: