(BPT) - As the weather turns warmer, most of us are experiencing cabin fever, anxious to escape to the outdoors. But has the harsh winter weather put a damper on your outdoor spaces? Don’t fret. You can easily spruce up your exteriors with a few easy and inexpensive home improvement projects. Here are a few fast fixes that will have your home looking great without taking a huge hit on your wallet.

2012 has been widely hailed as an exceptional year for film, but I’m at a loss as to where all these great films are supposed to be. (But then, if we’ve lowered our standards of “greatness” to the point that something like “Silver Linings Playbook” is being proclaimed as a masterwork ... .)

(BPT) - Remodeling and refreshing the home is a great way to keep cabin fever at bay during long winter months. Designing a bathroom remodel to incorporate innovative style, comfort and efficiency helps to speed the winter months along, and your family will certainly enjoy the rest of the season with a beautiful new bathroom.

The first Japanese pioneers in the Lodi area arrived in 1890. Seven men came to work in the sugar beet fields in the Delta region.

You ever get to the point where you’re tempted to swear off Hollywood studio pictures forever? I get there sometimes, but then I remember that, although it sounds terribly crass to say, the studio system is capable of producing great work — the best work, even, and I say that as an avid admirer of arthouse/foreign cinema.

We’re still stuck in a bit of a rut, it seems, with the local multiplexes offering very few reasonable choices for discriminating moviegoers — unless, of course, your plan is to see “The Avengers” for the fifth or sixth time, which seems perfectly sensible given the options. “Men in Black 3,” opening this weekend and set for review next, may break the monotony, but I’m trying to further temper my already modest expectations.

The summer movie season is now underway, ushered in by the record-smashing debut of the long-awaited “Avengers” movie — surely the first of many, considering the truly remarkable box office receipts this juggernaut has generated in a very short time.

This week, we venture even further into “The Cabin in the Woods” with an in-depth examination of the film’s deft deconstruction of gender-based archetypes. I kid, I kid ... as much as it would please me to spend the next many weeks harping on (thus far) the year’s best film, surely it is time to move on.

We’ve hit the two-week pre-summer doldrums I’ve been lamenting about lately, and frankly I think we both have better things to do with our time and efforts than read and write about “Think Like a Man” or “The Lucky One” or “The Three Stooges” or whatever other nonsense that opened last week. (However, in the interest of keeping reviews current and filling my quota of family titles, I will bow to pressure and take a look at “Pirates! Band of Misfits” next time. “The Avengers,” of course, will follow.)

So … Turns out I was wrong about “The Cabin in the Woods.” How wrong? Put it this way: If I see a more entertaining and creative movie in the entirety of 2012, I will be very pleasantly surprised.

“American Reunion” this week. “The Cabin in the Woods” next week. Some manner of nonsense for a couple weeks after that. Summer can’t come soon enough.

I humbly apologize for my absence last week. An unfortunate occurrence in my personal life prevented me from making a trip to the theater, but things have calmed down and it’s back to the grind.

As we begin the countdown to the start of the summer movie season (which, as per tradition, actually begins well before summer), I offer a brief preview of the remaining spring titles.

Seijiro "Joe" Masui was one of the early Japanese immigrants to settle in Lodi in the 1890s.

John Borja's dream is to build boats in an East Coast shipyard, but he knows that will never happen.

The story of Jeremiah Woods, the founder of Woodbridge, has been told often, but little is known about another Woods man who lived most of his life in the town named for his father.

Destination: Mt. Tamalpais

The Woodbridge Lodge No. 131 of Free and Accepted Masons recently marked its 150th year. The stately lodge building, across from the Woodbridge Post Office, is one of the area's oldest buildings and still stands as a solid symbol of an organization born in the community's pioneer days.

SACRAMENTO - Fires fed by raging winds raced across a wide swath of Northern California on Tuesday, destroying dozens of homes, threatening hundreds of others and leaving a firefighter severely burned.

An old wagon sits on the right. Farther down lies a giant Redwood log. A waterfall splashes over rocks and is surrounded by California native plants.

First held in 1857, the Stockton Fair has undergone location changes, a disastrous fire, missed a few years, then returned with vitality and evolved into today's long-running premier event to showcase the county and its agriculture.