Dear Friends,

We are moving furniture and inventory into our beautiful new store in downtown Rutland, Vermont. The store is really beginning to look like, well, a store. There’s still a lot of work to do, but we are very excited about the progress. One of the most compelling reasons that we decided to open a store in downtown Rutland rather than out by the strip malls was that there is lot of very positive energy in revitalizing the downtown area.

Vermont’s largest utility, Green Mountain Power, is in the process of renovating one of the classic downtown buildings and converting it to the Energy Innovation Center (along with other exciting developments). We are looking forward to being a part of a new Rutland. It is definitely an exciting project.

I was talking this morning with our sales team about the benefits of the current AT&T promotion on iPads. There are two ways to have a data contract for your AT&T cellular-equipped iPad.

The first is to opt for the month-to-month recurring charge of about $30. There is an advantage to that in that you can turn cellular service on and off, but the reality is that most month-to-month data plan subscribers never turn it off, so they are paying $30 a month. The second way is to sign up for a 2-year data plan with AT&T. If you buy an AT&T iPad and sign up for a 2-year data plan, not only is the plan less expensive but the current promotion from AT&T is that we can get you a $100 discount, too!

Additionally, if you have a few people on your cellular plan, you can save even more with a data sharing plan from AT&T. We can hook you up with these plans and the $100 savings at any of our stores.

Well, it is almost spring here in Vermont; I can see buds on the trees, but there is still snow on the garden. I remember a few years ago, Artie was going so stir-crazy with spring and mud season that he called me up to see if he could shovel the snow out of the garden — we told him no. Grace has started seedlings, though, and I can definitely see rototilling in my future.