What's on tv

I've been watching the Paris Open Masters tournament all week. Today is semi-finals day with the final on Sunday evening. I'll wager Djokovic will dispatch Wawrinka, but I wouldn't predict Ferrer v. Murray. That should be a slugfest!

I've heard of "The Hunger Games," but I've not read the books, so I probably won't watch the movies.

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.

This one's from New Zealand. Even the Kiwis can make bad films. The French title means "The Buried Heart," but the film's actual title is "Cave In."

Le cœur enseveli (Cave In). New Zealand made-for-tv movie. Directed by Rex Plano, 2003.
With Mimi Rogers, Ted Shackelford, and Bruce Allpress.
► A police commissioner calls on her experience to help four miners trapped underground.
This little disaster film totally sacrifices the potential of its spectacular story in favor of the conventional and the bland.
For adults and kids over 10.

Friday fifties

Two ways! Way one: today's 50mm photo. Way two: the temperature this morning is 59ºF (15ºC). That's pretty darned mild for a November morning. And our high temperatures over the weekend are expected to reach 70ºF (low 20sC).

Home on the range, 50mm f/8.0, 1/125s, ISO 1600.

I took advantage of yesterday's sunny day to wash the windows in the living room, meaning the big sliding glass doors that open onto the deck. That also meant taking down the curtains and washing them. I told you that I'm in a fall cleaning mood. Little by little, I'm working through the projects on my list. I really should go out today and rake the leaves out of the driveway. We shall see.

On the forest floor

Well, woods is more like it. There are forests around, but we live among the vines, so we have patches of woods here and there. The bigger forests are not far. I can see part of the Forêt de Gros Bois across the river valley from us when I'm walking in the vineyard. The Forêt de Brouard is just to our south.

This mushroom is called amanite, and is quite toxic. Don't eat them!

Some of the patches of woods around us also have names. Closest to us is the Bois des Vaux where Callie and I sometimes walk. She's chased animals in there and that's where we encounter the stuffed clothing nailed to the trees. Spooky. I think that the difference between un bois and une forêt in French is pretty much the same as between woods and forest in English; it's a matter of size, the former being much smaller in area than the latter.

Be they woods or forests, they're not wild places but almost meticulously managed for wood. In forests, paths and roadways are well maintained and hunting blinds can be seen at regular intervals. Forests and woods are refuges for game like deer and wild boar. Except, of course, during hunting season.

Here's a case where an accent mark makes a difference. The word forêt, with the circonflexe over the "e" means forest. Without the circonflexe, it's foret which means drill bit. The words are pronounced exactly alike, your only clue to their difference being their gender: it's une forêt but un foret.

Merry Christmas to us

I got the call yesterday. We signed the order back in mid-July, now our new boiler has finally arrived. We were expecting it toward the end of September; production delays kept that from happening. But it's here now. Installation will happen in three weeks. It's this year's Christmas present to ourselves.

Water droplets on fallen leaves.

The boiler heats water for the house's central heating system. The current one is twenty-three years old. It's working but we don't know for how much longer. It gets annual maintenance, but the parts are wearing out. The old pump unit needs CPR every now and then, and the control panel is shot. We have to turn the heat on and off manually; there is no thermostat in the house. All of that will change, supposedly, with the new unit.

We thought it would be better to replace the boiler now rather than wait for it to break down in the middle of a cold winter. The new unit will have a remote-controlled programmable thermostat unit inside the house. No more going down into the utility room to turn the heat on every morning, then having to remember to turn it off before the house gets too hot. The new boiler will also come with a new pump. It should use significantly less fuel oil than the old one (let's hope Volkswagen wasn't in charge of the fuel usage stats). It's a condensing unit, meaning that the heat going up the chimney is captured and transformed into heat for the house. And, for all that, current law lets us get a nice percentage of the boiler's cost back in the form of a tax rebate next year (that law expires in December). We also get a free year on our maintenance and emergency service contract.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that all goes smoothly with the installation and that the thing works as promised. I'll keep you posted, of course.

A rainy day

A weather system is moving through from the south bringing us rain today. I heard some on the roof early this morning. Apparently they're having a serious storm down on the Mediterranean coast with high winds and rain. We're not getting anything that serious here, and since the rain is coming from down south, the air is relatively warm.

A dew drop clings to a grape leaf in the early morning light.

I washed the windows in the kitchen on Monday. I'm planning to do the living room windows one day this week, while it's still warm. I guess I'm in a fall cleaning mode. I have a list of little projects I want to get done before the cold weather arrives. One of them is planting bulbs outdoors, so that will have to wait for the rain to clear off, which it is supposed to do after today. But there are some things that I've been saving for a rainy day and, well, here it is.

Monday macros

We're having very nice weather for November. It's not quite "indian summer," but it's also not cold and rainy. I was able to sit out on the deck a little on Sunday afternoon; Bertie liked that because he likes to snooze on my lap when I'm out there. Our mornings are a little foggy and damp but who cares with afternoon highs in the upper teens (high 60s F).

Grape vine tendril and spider's web, 100mm (macro) f/8.0, 1/320s, ISO 2500.

The spider webs are covered in pearls of dew each morning, making them quite visible. I saw this semi-circular web stretched between two grape vine branches along a support wire. There was no sign of the spider who made it.

Winter wheat

A few weeks ago a tractor plowed up the field down below our hill and the farmer planted his crop of winter wheat. Now it has begun to sprout. The plants will stay fairly small through the winter, but in spring they will grow tall and make seed heads.

A field of wheat.

One of our neighbors had a party last night. I heard the boom-boom of their music as late (early?) as three this morning. We heard people talking outside the house through the night, and car doors closing with bizarre regularity (but I didn't hear any cars start up or drive by). They didn't make enough noise to bother us, mostly because it's not warm enough for them to be outdoors partying. But we certainly knew they were there (and still are at 6:30 this morning).