Another clear, cold day. I do think it's beginning to show signs of warming up a little, though. Tonight will still be close to zero, but that's better than a minus zero!

All the cold has toughened up the ice on the pond enough so lots of fishermen are venturing out with their vehicles. Diane Rossi took this photo this morning (Tues.) and said she's been seeing more and more vehicles out there every day. With so little snow covering, it is easy to access the ice and also I believe the ice may be thicker because there's not much snow to insulate it. I still wouldn't want to drive a vehicle out there, though.

Some of you may have visited the page Fred put up on the web site to poll opinions on the end-of-year JPA meeting and noticed the kind of crazy security thing that's there now where you need to type in two words to leave a comment. Fred had to put that on because we were getting all kinds of spam comments with active links that take you to unexpected sites with who-knows-what possible viruses attached. If any of you have a problem with that page, let us know as there are other ways Fred can avoid the spammers, but this seemed the easiest.

I got an unusual comment on the blog a while back. It seemed innocent enough, and I while I didn't really understand it, I let it be posted (my blog is set up so I have to approve all comments before they are posted) but I was still suspicious and looked more closely. There was a link embedded so if anyone clicked on the comment they would be taken to a different web site - one that I didn't want associated with my blog, so I immediately dumped it. I was very glad I discovered what it was and won't be that gullible again. I've recently heard from some other people that they've had unwanted sites pop up in forwards, but I don't worry much about that because I don't have time these days to read forwards, so they don't even get opened.

I had a call from my new granddaughter, Jo-Ann this afternoon. She had just come home from school and was excited to bring me up to date on things. She went skiing yesterday at Burke with the kids from her school and loved it. She said she only fell a couple of times and didn't mind the cold at all. She said they were there from 12:45 to 4 o'clock and the school provided equipment for them. Her mom and dad told me she came home too tired to eat and crashed in bed immediately. She also told me names of all her new friends at school, she had a play date Saturday with a friend and has a birthday party sleep-over scheduled next weekend. I guess she's adapting really well.

Monika has started work at NVRH radiology department as of Monday. She said she will spend some time getting trained re. equipment and procedures, and then will be working when they need her until a full-time position opens up. She's happy to be back at NVRH where she did her work/study last winter. I also talked briefly with Bill - he's finding having two females in the house a challenge, I think.

We're finding it a challenge living with our cat Woody these days. He keeps checking outdoors to see if it's spring yet, and gets pretty agitated about this time of night, starting the routine of asking to go out and knocking to come back in within four or five minutes. He only goes into the garage - it's way too cold to let him outside and we'd worry about him. In the garage he can hang out in the wood pile and maybe chase a squirrel or mouse, but these last few nights it's been too cold even in the garage for that. So after a dozen or so tries, he'll begin to want to rumble here in the house. He's not a light weight and when he gallops through the living room he sounds like a small pony. And he's inclined to be clumsy. He bumps into things sometimes and goes skidding out of control when he leaps onto a bureau or chair that has something on it. Last night he cleaned off one of the bureau's in our bedroom, and almost every day we find something in the basement he's knocked over, so I suspect he spends much of the night romping around down there all by himself. He likes to investigate the crawl space, accessible only by a small high window. There's nothing out there, but he still likes to go there.

He also likes sitting in the windows over the kitchen sink. I have a pot of chives growing there, some basil and parsley. I should have said that I DID have chives. Now they are cropped neatly, not more than one or two springs left. He loves them - we now call him "old onion breath." Next year I'll pot some just for him and keep mine out of his reach, somehow. I think I'll start a pot of grass for him. (No, not the kind you put in brownies or smoke . . . !) I saw in a pet magazine recently an ad for a "kit" which was a flower pot and a little packet of grass seed especially for cats. I bet somebody makes a bundle on that. Remember when someone came up with a "pet stone" a few years ago?