Dear Friends,

We’ve missed yet another snowstorm. As I was flying into Burlington on Saturday I saw an awful lot of bare ground. There is very little snow here when we are usually over our heads in snow this time of the year. All the storms seem to have been south of us. I’m back on an airplane again, heading out to Portland to visit our friends at the Mac Store, an excellent Apple Specialist in the Pacific Northwest. I will be visiting their stores and then going to see a Blazers vs. Celtics game. Kevin Anderson, their CEO, is almost as rabid a Blazers fan as I am a Celtics fan, so we have a friendly wager on this season. Both teams have been ravaged by injuries but the Blazers second string has really stepped up.

I had fantastic meetings out in Cupertino with the folks from Apple and the other Apple Specialists on the Reseller Advisory Board. I was also asked to make a presentation about Small Dog on Friday morning. I stressed about the presentation for a week or two and probably drove Kali mad as she helped create the Keynote slide show. Once I was in the room and ready to go, though, I was in the zone and it went really well. I am very happy with our partnership with Apple and am very excited about our future plans.

I ventured up to San Francisco before I got on the plane and was able to visit Macworld and have dinner with an old friend before I got on the red-eye. Macworld was sad. There were almost no products shown for the Mac; it was a lot of products for iPod and iPhone. It was confined to one of the halls and did not even fill the hall. There seemed to be a lot of people there, however, that was because IDG advertised a lot of free tickets. Many vendors I spoke with were very disappointed, saying that there were virtually no industry present and most of the crowd consisted of consumers. Most said they would not be back next year. I think this is the end of Macworld and that is understandable, yet it is also sad. I have a lot of great memories of Macworlds in San Francisco, Boston and New York.

Our big tax free day is coming up in Vermont on March 6th. As Katie and I were driving to Boston a week ago, we resurrected an idea that we talked about the last time we had a tax-free day—staying open 24 hours. We looked at each other and suddenly realized that she was the store manager and I was the CEO and we could make this decision! We made the call and will be open from 12:00 AM to 11:59PM on March 6th. Katie and I pledged to drink a lot of coffee and do the overnight slot; I think we’ll have plenty of visitors, from customers to employees checking out the late night and early morning tax-free shopping.