We had a real taste of spring weather today. A little rain, actually balmy air coming out of the south, and lots of melting going on. The  temperature this afternoon was 55 degrees when I went for a walk. Now it's down to 39. While I was walking, I heard geese down on the pond. Gretchen Farnsworth (at the very north end of Sandy Beach Road) said the channel is showing lots of open water these days. She and I agreed that this is no time to go out onto the ice. There could be warm spots where the ice is very thin and it's difficult to tell until it's too late. So be safe and stay off the ice.

Speaking of ice - many of you know Everett Drew who has ice-fished on Joe's Pond for many years. Everett's wife, Norma, passed away on March 11th. She was 81 and had been in declining health for some time. The loss will be hard for Everett - they were together for 63 years.

These are the last days of the Ice-Out Contest, so if you haven't purchased your ticket(s) yet, better get going. You don't have to leave home to buy tickets, you can get them on line, either purchasing and paying for batches of ten on line or you can print fewer and send them by regular mail with $1 each for however many you want or need. Just be sure you have the picks in the mail dated on or before April 1st. The pay-on-line tickets will be available literally until the last minute of April 1st 11:59 p.m.

It's nice that the Joe's Pond Ice Out Contest lends a bit of normalcy to our lives during this very stressful time. The contest is kind of like the pond - no matter what is going on around it, the pond freezes over every year, thaws out in the spring, and some lucky person gets a nice fat check if he or she guesses the closest to the time the flag goes down. Our Ice Elves will be gathering tickets as usual from outlets, our Web Wizard will provide a spreadsheet of online tickets and all will go to the Data Gnome who will whip those thousands of bits of information into searchable dates and numbers. When the time is right, the flag will sink into the water, the ice will be gone and someone will be a few thousand dollars richer. Isn't that comforting? Some things don't change, no matter what.