Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Our Spring Vacation Pictures

We just got back from a great vacation in the East Coast- where we saw friends and family, enjoyed some nice spring weather, and had some great times. Our photos from the vacation are now online at Flickr; to see more than the few public ones you need to be logged in and registered as one of our friends. We stayed with our friends Bridget, Ryan, Ronan, and their two dogs and two cats.  Here are Lynn and Bridget on a stroll we took downtown.

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We also enjoyed a nice afternoons at the lake nearby their house (click and drag or use the zoom buttons inside the panoramic image below).

We then drove to Washington DC and saw my aunt Ellie - including a trip to her art studio:

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Before making our way to State College to see my mom in her home, where we also celebrated Passover with good family friends.

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Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Colorado Ski Weekend

This weekend, we headed up to Silverthorne to do some skiing.  On my third day, I took off work and skied with my father-in-law Wally - it was my 15th day of the season, and his 101st!

We started by doing Montezuma bowl at Arapahoe Basin, which just opened this year and provides some pretty extensive and dramatic terrain as you can see:

 

Panoramic Image- Click and drag, use - and + to zoom

For our third run we ended up dropping in on Schauffler's run, which is skiers right down the ridge.  Due to the steepness, and some challenging breakable crust snow conditions it was a lot more difficult to turn than anticipated, but we did fine in getting down.  A complete rush, but one that left us ready to head for the relative safety of the mogul runs back at the North Peak of Keystone where we spent the rest of our day.

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Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Chanukkah 2007

We just finished celebrating the first day of Chanukkah, and captured a few videos to share with our friends and family.

Lighting the candles:

Sydney and Sienna's Gifts:

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Babycakes is the word!

We got our pictures back from Babycakes photography, where we worked with Jennie Murphy on getting some professional pictures taken of our family.


The whole experience was a lot more fun than I was expecting– there was a whole lot of fun stuff to do with the girls including some cute ballerina tutus they wore.  The results are just what we were hoping for, as these pictures demonstrate:


 

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Jennie has a nice studio at her house that we visited to get the pictures done- in addition to her web site she has a blog to see as well if you are interested in her work.

Saturday, October 13, 2007

My Barcelona Experience

Barcelona is a true jewel of a city, rising up from the Mediterranean into the hills of Spain.  Recently I traveled there as part of a conference my company, BEA Systems, held there – and fortunately I had a couple days to see the city. 


I’ve now posted both pictures and videos from my explorations.


On Sunday, I was fortunate to meet up with a great group of people from around the company who were interested in seeing the old town and parts of Gracia avenue.  As I’d later discover more fully, the old town is an extensive warren of narrow cobblestone streets and pathways – so dense that even Google maps don’t cover anything but the main avenues with street names.


What struck me the most was the work of the architect Antoni Gaudi who worked in the Modernisme (Art Nousveau) movement.  Especially fascinating to me was Casa Batallo which is a like being transplanted into the world of Jules Verne.



Monday I met up with my co-worker Eddie, and visited some of the classic sites including the Park Guell and the Sagrada Familia church, before heading to the waterfront.


The rest of the week went quickly as there were talks to give, customer briefings, and all kinds of restaurants to visit (dinner hour starts around 10pm).   I’d highly recommend Pla for the kangaroo if you find yourself in the city; as well restaurant torre d’alta mar for the spectacular views of the city.  Eddie and I also managed to get a couple hours in at Fundacio Joan Miro, which I found to be another highlight of the city with a great side-by-side works of both Miro and Calder. 


 

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Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Pictures from Sienna's First Week


We've posted new pictures from Sienna's first week online at our gallery.

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

A good read

While off work while home watching Sienna I picked up a few novels to spend the waking hours- and was fortunate to pick up one novel, Absolute Friends by John LeCarre that I think is truly top notch. While I've always enjoyed watching spy movies (Bond, Ronin, The Good Shepard) I haven't read much spy fiction and evidently LeCarre is the grandmaster of the genre. He wrote the classic Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and as well as the novel for a movie I also enjoyed named the Constant Gardner.

What had me on the seat of my pants with Absolute Friends, which is a story of two friends who go from escapades in Cold War Berlin to pawns in our War on Terror age, was the way he wove a compelling story around characters that are intelligent and intellectual while also active in the spy trade. Your average Bond movie doesn't mix Adorno, Marcuse, and microfilm into the same page but somehow LeCarre pulls it all together. Plus, he offers a stirring contemporary indictment of Pax Americana realities in the context of the New Great Game which you don't see coming until it blows open the story. End result is I finished the book and picked up his latest novel, The Mission Song, later the same day.