I replaced the hard drive in my Macbook Pro last night, and restored everything from a backup while we watched a French movie.  My computer had been acting flaky, with lots of pauses and programs not responding. A couple of weeks ago I tried restarting the computer and it wouldn’t come back up, so I booted from the install DVD, fixed disk permissions, then repaired the hard drive. While lots of permissions had gotten out of whack, the disk utility reported nothing wrong with the hard drive. The computer rebooted, but continued to act up, so I replaced the 250 GB drive with a 500 GB drive and everything has been working really well all day.

Laurie’s taking French this semester, so we are watching French movies to improve listening and comprehension. I like French movies because they are made for adults in that they assume the viewer has intelligence and they generally have complex plots, good dialog and excellent cinematography. The silly comedies we’ve seen are funny bet not plain stupid, and the action films are still fairly sophisticated.  We watched D13-U last night, the sequel to Luc Besson’s District 13. It didn’t have as much of the parkour type stunts as the first movie, but it still had a lot of action and it was exciting and suspenseful.  If you are into French films I highly recommend the following: OSS 117: Lost in Rio, Tell No One, Mesrine: Part 1 & 2, Potiche and Priceless.

OSS 117: Lost in Rio is a comedy set in the 70’s,  it is very funny and really has the look and feel of the 70’s. Tell No One is fascinating and has a super complex plot. Mesrine: Part 1 & 2 is about the life of Mesrine, who was France’s public enemy #1 in the 70’s and early 80’s. Potiche, another one set in the late 70’s, is about a trophy wife who ends up running the family’s umbrella factory. Priceless is a modern, French version of Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

I think Rosencrantz was trying to warm his back when I photographed him with the sun starting to rise over his head through the glass this morning. A roadrunner was foraging in a vineyard when I went out to the post office at noon, and I got the sparrow hanging out in a fruit tree when I took out the trash this afternoon.