BRRRRRR!
Cold morning here at Joe's Pond. It was 12 degrees below zero when Fred first checked outside my office window around 6 a.m. this morning. I was still warm in my bed - no need to stir that early, especially when Fred is up and about keeping the wood stove operating at top efficiency. By the time I got up, not only was the house nice and warm, but the thermometer outside my office was reading only -5 degrees! Slow progress, but coming up.

For people who have asked me to send Ice-Out tickets early in order to use them as stocking stuffers or in greeting cards, we just realized the return address was not printed on this year's tickets. This will probably not be a problem - you can get all the information on the web site, and I'm sure if anyone just addressed the envelope "Ice-Out Contest, Joe's Pond, Vermont - it would probably get to us. But the address is "Joe's Pond Association, PO Box 111, W. Danville VT 05873." Please let folks know this is where they should send their ticket stubs.

Yesterday I talked with Karl Couillard who will be logging in our tickets this year, and he is all set up and ready to go. Chico Carcoba resigned - I think he wants to be able to delay returning from Florida in the spring, and wasn't able to do that with the tickets stacking up waiting to be logged into his computer. Karl will be doing them as we feed them to him, so it will be an on-going process until the contest closes on April 1.

I had this great photo from Diane Rossi this morning taken at about 7:30 a.m. She also sent the following:
There was some kind of fight on the ice yesterday just out here between a weasel (or mink) and something else....maybe a small beaver. The weasel won, and pushed the other carcass into Roger's boathouse!!!