Things are becoming more normal around here. The weather has moderated, it's snowing (that's normal!), the ice fishing huts have sprung up on the pond, snow mobiles are using the rail-trail and zooming along on the pond, town budgets are being whittled (we hope) and soon it'll be Town Meeting Day, March 3rd. That effectively shortens the winter to a manageable period. After town meeting comes maple sugar season and then Ice-Out and naturally mud season is in there someplace - and finally people will feel it's ok to return from their winter retreats, tan and eager for summer at Joe's.

In the meantime, Fred took some pictures of the folks out on the ice fishing on Saturday. Bill and Diane Rossi skied at Burke this morning, but Diane said it could have been better. They had six or eight inches of new snow and it was still snowing. I think it must have been fairly cold on the mountain, too. The temperature didn't get very high here all day.

We've spent a quiet day. Fred was out a couple of times to clear the snow, and this afternoon we watched the pre-inauguration ceremonies in Washington, DC. It looked mighty cold there, too. Of course, we've also been following the news on the plane that ditched in the Hudson River. Quite remarkable that everyone came out of it ok. It was snowing in NYC today and the reporters looked cold. I had an e-mail from someone in Georgia today and they've had snow there, too, and a cousin in Beverly Hills, Florida, said it's been unusually cold there, as well. This was a good year for us to have all that winterization stuff done on the house . . . !