Dear Friends,

It seems that one second it was mud season and there were no leaves on the trees and suddenly, I blinked my eyes and all the trees have full foliage, the apple tree outside my window is covered with blossoms and the Green Mountains are green again. It is still too muddy in my garden to plant anything, but the seedlings Grace has started are doing well and we can start moving them outside to harden them up.

We had a very successful eWaste Recycling Event in Montpelier last Saturday. The event was held at National Life, which sits up on a hill overlooking the state capital building with its golden dome. The road leading up to their building is probably a couple of miles long, and from 8:30 am to 1:00 pm the traffic was backed all the way down to Route 2. It was the first time we had done a collection event in Montpelier and I did not know how successful it would be, but the event was a smashing success.

Thanks to Apple, all of the ewaste recycling logistics were taken care of, so the Small Dog team handled traffic control and worked the long line of cars, handing out coupons for discounts at our stores, little plastic dogs and OS X keyboard shortcuts. It was great to talk with the customers and even though many had to wait for over an hour to reach the point where their ewaste was removed from the car, all were happy and thankful for the effort.

Tomorrow, we hold a similar event at the Mall of New Hampshire in Manchester, NH and I’ll be there again with the Small Dog team to both demonstrate our commitment to the PLANET portion of our mission and also to talk to customers and enjoy the goodwill.

I took a short trip to New York on Tuesday, and on the way home I sat next to a gentleman on the plane who had a new iPad. We struck up a conversation after I asked him about his Smart Cover as a ploy to talk about our Hammerhead cases. It turns out that he is a good customer of ours who had recently converted his office from a PC setup to Mac-based with ten Macs and a Mac mini server. He was raving about our personnel and the savings he had achieved by moving to Mac. We decided he should do a testimonial for us someday! Talking about customer loyalty and his experiences was a great way to make short work of the flight.

Speaking of Hammerhead (the brand, not the dog), I am pleased to announce that we have been granted the ® registered trademark status for Hammerhead products!