Dear Friends,

The snow is melting and we are seeing some signs of spring besides the maple sugaring going on around us. I’ve seen a few motorcycles on the road, the birds are singing in the morning and people seem to be ready for the changes in the seasons. I’m seeing short pants and sandals even though the temps are still in the 30s and 40s.

Our tax-free day was an amazing success with sales exceeding the back-to-school tax free day in August. We had happy customers, happy employees and one very long day. I worked all day Friday, went home got some dinner and then headed up to S. Burlington with Hammer for the all night 24 hour event. We had a rush of customers at midnight, but by 1:30 AM it slowed down and we had 2-3 sets of customers per hour throughout the night with a lot of nurses and doctors and ambulance drivers stopping in.

I kicked Kali and Katie’s butts in a marathon game of Crazy Eights and consumed my weight in coffee. Hammerhead seemed to enjoy himself during the night time hours playing ball with the staff but he was really in his element as the store “greeter” as the customers started pouring in first thing in the morning.

Early afternoon, I came down to Waitsfield and the store there was going strong and phone traffic was busy. I stayed around for a bit but hit the wall and headed home around 3. Now, that was a lot of hours for me—going about 32 hours straight—but Katie was there for almost the entire time and I think she was well over 40 hours. The whole Small Dog team was on their ‘A’ game, we had fun and sold a lot of Macs, too!