What's on tv

It's Ted Danson! And his hair! Mr. Danson is a well-known American television actor who is also well-known for wearing a hairpiece since the early days. I remember him (and his toupee) most from his role as Sam Malone in the 1980s sitcom, "Cheers." Where everybody knows your mane. Rimshot.

Ted Danson stars in "CSI: Crime Scene Investigations" which is called "Les experts" in France and, starting this month, Patricia Arquette stars in the spinoff, "CSI: Cyber."

What not to watch this week. Our tv magazine rates shows and movies using a star system: one star is ok, four stars is best. They use another symbol for really bad movies: the red dot. It means "à zapper" (change the channel!). The editors often include comments about the movie that make me laugh.

I've been in France long enough that I don't really know anything about the "Fast and Furious" thing, although I've heard of it. I read on the internet that there have been seven films in the series since 2001. Who the heck is Bow Wow?

Fast & Furious: Tokyo Drift. American/German action film. Directed by J. Lin. 2006.
With Lucas Black, Bow Wow, Sonny Chiba, and Brian Tee.
A young man, passionate about urban street racing, leaves California for Tokyo where he discovers drift racing.
►This third installment, an unpleasantly stupid film, is even worse than the second one. There is absolutely no storyline.
Not for children under 10. 

Plow your own furrow

I think I used my allotment of o's and w's for the month in that title. This is one of the two new vineyard plots out back. The grapes were planted last summer. They still look like sticks stuck in the ground, but once they get their leaves this spring they'll be more recognizable.

These little vines will need a few years before they produce enough grapes for production.

The crew still hasn't finished installing the stakes and guide wires, but I don't think there's any rush. They'll probably get that done once the winter pruning is finished.

Early March sunrise

We seem to be entering a stretch of nice weather. Clear skies and warming temperatures are predicted through the weekend. Nice! One of our neighbors was out on Wednesday cutting his grass. I think it's still too early to do that; the ground is still very saturated and there are mole hills everywhere.

Looking northeast. The sun rises in the east-southeast this time of year, to the right of the frame.

The skies are pretty in the morning now, especially with today's full moon setting. Unfortunately, it's setting in a spot where I can't get a clear shot from the house with the camera. And I'm not adventurous enough to go outside with the tripod at six-thirty, especially with the temperature down close to freezing. Maybe next month. Or the one after that.

View from my window

I was (again) experimenting with the camera and took some photos from the den window on Tuesday morning. This is part of the view; it's a long shot with the zoom lens. The vineyard team had just arrived and were getting ready to start the day's pruning. Ken and Callie were out there somewhere (but they're not in the picture).

Details: f/20, 1/15sec., ISO-200, focal length 260mm. I used a tripod with a 2sec shutter delay.

I'm thinking about a new camera. I've had the T3i for almost three years, and now I'm itching to upgrade to a full-sensor camera (the current Canon is a cropped-sensor camera). I'm still in the research stage at this point and not yet ready to buy. If any of you out there have experience with full- vs. cropped-sensor DSLRs, I'd appreciate hearing what you think.

My issue with the camera is image quality. I've never been completely satisfied with the clarity of my shots with this camera. I expected better when I upgraded from the bridge camera to the SLR. Now, I know it could be me and not the camera, but I've worked for nearly three years on this problem (shooting technique, upgraded lenses, and post-processing) and can't seem to lick it. I normally shoot in full manual mode and occasionally use automatic or shutter/aperture priority modes for comparison. I don't shoot in RAW mode, but that shouldn't be necessary since I don't normally enlarge or print my photos.

I'm not trying for high-end professional quality, but I do look at a lot of photo blogs on the internet and am often envious of the beautifully crisp and tack-sharp images I see on many of them. My photos often seem fuzzy to my eye. So I have to wonder, is it me or is it the camera?

Big pines

Not far from the piney woods is this stand of very tall pine trees. You can't see it in the photo, but there's a paved road just in front of the trees that meets up with the dirt road that Callie and I usually walk in the morning. The intersection is toward the right, just outside the image.

Big pine trees among the grape vines.

Little signs of spring are popping up here and there. We have cyclamen blooming in the yard and the primroses are starting to flower. I can see buds fattening on the trees, although leaves are still a month or so away. Our weather is consistent with typical March weather so far; series of squalls called giboulées are moving through, although they're not yet very strong. In France, the March squalls are called les giboulées de mars. In the US (and the UK, I think), they're the same as what we call April showers.

Reminds me of a childhood riddle: If March winds bring April showers, and April showers bring May flowers, what do May flowers bring?

Fougasse en pizza

I planned to make some pizza dough one night this past week, but when it came time to do it, I didn't feel like it. So Ken decided to make une fougasse (focaccia bread) the next morning and dress it up with pizza toppings for lunch. His dough included herbs and olive oil and we topped it with tomato sauce, garlic, ham, mushrooms, and cheese.

It looks like a pizza, but it's not.

It was delicious! The bottom of the fougasse was crispy while the inside was tender. And the toppings turned it into a meal. It made a nice change from the pizza we usually make. Our plan was to have a green salad after, but the fougasse was so good that we ate the whole thing, then didn't have room for the salad. Oh well.

The dough was thicker than it looks in the photos, with a nice bready texture inside.

Bottles at sunrise

Many of the growers around us make use of old mineral water bottles in their vineyard parcels. They cut the tops and bottoms off and fit the bottle over young vines that are replacing older vines in an established parcel. I suppose that this not only protects the vine from critters but also makes a little greenhouse effect, shielding the young shoot from wind and cold. But I'm only guessing.

Water bottles seem to glow in the morning sun.

I cleaned out under our carport on Saturday. It's the place where I cut and store firewood and kindling each year. But not any more. Now it will be home to the old Peugeot as the other car takes its place in the garage. If all goes according to plan, I won't be cutting much wood in the future. We want to replace our wood burning stove with a wider model to accommodate 50mm logs. That length is more readily available from wood vendors whereas the 33mm logs we use now are not (or if they are, they're more costly). That's one of a few summer projects we have in mind for the house. Stay tuned.