A few fun new ways to spend money!

I finally got my laptop back which, for the new hard drive, labor, and tax cost me about 130 Euros, which is just shy of $200.
Wednesday I went to visit Alex and Numa Cornut at Chateau Guiot. Alex ended up occupied fixing a tractor out in one of the vineyards, but I tasted through the wines first with a French woman named Sylvia who works there. Then Brendan, one of two Australians currently working harvest there showed up to tell her there were customers there to taste. However, Brendan speaks about 2 words of French, and Sylvia speaks about 2 words of English, so I had to translate. I'm not sure how Brendan and the other Australian get along here when Alex and Numa aren't around normally, but that must be tough. I still feel intimidated doing new things when I'm not sure if I'm going to understand what's being said, and I'm told I speak quite well.
So Brendan took me through tasting some tank samples, and some barrel samples of 2008's, then Numa arrived, back from helping his brother fix a tractor. Numa and I had a very interesting chat about the influence of Robert Parker, and what Numa has noticed as a decrease in Americans' preference for extremely oaky wines. He gave me a few bottles of Guiot wine, and invited me to an end-of-harvest paella party today, which I'll be going to as soon as I finish writing this.
I left there just about 6:30, and I was about 17km from Nimes, which meant I'd be able to make it before the computer shop closed, but they hadn't called yet, so I didn't know if it was done. Still I decided to give it a shot. I tried calling as I drove, but there was no answer. I tried again, and again, and finally somebody picked up at about 6:45, just as I was entering the city. The computer was not ready. I turned around and headed to the gas station next to the grocery store, which was the closest one I knew of. I had tried to buy gas the night before, but apparently the '24 hour' gas stations here only accept French bank cards after the attendant has left for the evening. Despite having a sign with Visa and Mastercard logos, the machine wouldn't take my card. I was starting to get worried. I had just under a quarter tank. I drove back toward home, and on the way stopped again at the station I'd tried the night before. This time there was a woman working in the booth, and she told me to use Mastercard I just had to fill up and then pay her on my way out. I filled up and paid. It will be a long time before I complain about the price of gas in the US. About 33 Liters of unleaded cost me over 50 Euros. I left the gas station and the car started to klunk. I had put the wrong gas in the car.
The real irony here is the fact that I've been making a real effort, and doing a very good job at making sure I know exactly what I'm being asked to do at work. I'd say I typically understand 50 to 75% of the actual words that are being said to me most of the time. Sometimes more, but I'd call that the average. Now, through inference and reading body language and just generally knowing what's going on in the winery, I'd say I know what I'm being asked what to do on the first try 80% of the time. When I do have to ask for clarification it usually just takes asking once to figure out the meaning of whatever words I didn't understand.
So that's why it's ironic that I didn't perform the retrospectively seemingly elementary step of asking what kind of gas to put in the car I'm using. I'm sure it's due in fact to the fact that I've never put anything but unleaded in any car I've ever drive. Also, the fact that I was desperate to get some gas in the car.
Needless to say I didn't make it very far, and thank god I had a cell phone. Cyril came and picked me up. We tried to siphon the unleaded out of the car, but the car has anti-siphoning technology of some sort, so we left it and Cyril called a mechanic the next morning.
In the end it was all ok. Apparently a diesel engine, though it won't run on unleaded, won't be harmed by having unleaded in it, while an unleaded engine that gets fed diesel is well and truly screwed.
The real bummer for me at the time was that it put a damper on what had been a pretty awesome day for me up to that point. I did decuvage (shoveling grape must out of the fermenter) in the morning, which is rough work, but I was no worse for wear, and was proud of myself. It's like being in the garbage smasher on the Death Star, but it's full of really thick mud and you've got to shovel your way out. We prepped two other fermenters to receive Mourvedre Thursday, and Thursday afternoon we bled off the rosé, which I hadn't gotten to see before. The rosé is made using the saigneé method, which means the red grapes go into a tank, they're allowed to sit for a while to extract color. How long depends on the grapes. In this case, the Mourvedre sat on the skins for about 6 hours before being bled into another fermenter.
Also on Wednesday, Cyril came over from Bressades to borrow some wine. He has a cuve of white that had stopped fermenting. There are a few ways to deal with this, and one is to introduce some wine that is still fermenting vigorously. We've done this once here at Carlot already. We had a tank of Syrah that had stopped, so after emptying a cuve of Roussanne that had just finished, the lees were left in the cuve, and the Syrah pumped in. Today, Cyril took about 5hl of Marsanne that was fermenting well to add to his stuck fermenter.

That's all I've got right now, and I have a paella party to get to.