This is my annual post whining about snow falling in late March on my blooming crocus and daffodils.
I should be used to it, but I’m not.
General
My Kindle Book
Some of you know that I run another website called Outdoor Cooking Magic where I write about cooking outdoors. I like to cook on the grill, smoke in my smoker, cook with Dutch ovens, and cook over a campfire. I put recipes, tips, reviews of products, news, and other information related to outdoor cooking subjects on this website. I recently participated in the 30 Day Challenge, which is run by a very smart guy named Ed Dale. He teaches about how to start a business online and make your first dollar. It’s an annual event and I’ve participated several times in the past years, always learning lots of new things to help with my ventures on the Internet.
This year the challenge was teaching us how to write an ebook that would be put in the Kindle Store on Amazon in 30 days. I’ve been working hard the past month and last night published by first book on Amazon in the Kindle Store. It’s called Grilled Vegetable Magic. It’s been a fun process and there is something satisfying about having a product published on Amazon. Things are so different these days and publishing is truly open to anyone that wants to do it. I’ve also started a companion website called Grilled Vegetable Magic where I’ll focus on grilled vegetable topics.
My sister, Christine, also participated in the challenge, and is very close to having her book published as well. She loves to make custom costumes and she has written an awesome book about how to create and design a Halloween costume. I’ll put up another post when she has her book done. It’s pretty timely, with Halloween right around the corner.
I’ve also brainstormed another 20 similar books that I could write, so that is one of the by goals over the winter, to get several more ebooks written.
If any of you would like to participate in the Challenge, and get that book that you’ve always wanted to write done and out in the Kindle store on Amazon, they’ll be leaving the training material up for another 60 days. I’d be happy to answer any questions that you might have.
Grizzlies and Wolves
Since it’s nigh unto impossible to see grizzlies or wolves in the park, (although various Playmill actors have seen both this summer), we took a little trip to the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center in West Yellowstone, Montana. It’s actually an impressive facility where injured animals or animals that can’t survive in the wild are able to live out their lives. One of the programs there reads like this:
Keeper Kids – Join us for an exciting activity especially designed for kids ages 5-12. In this unique program, kids first learn about grizzly bear eating habits and then accompany the naturalist and animal keeper into the bear habitat to hide food for some of our resident bears. After the food is hidden, kids get to learn how bears use their sense of smell to search out food.
So the kids go in the enclosure, hide the food, then watch the bears digging all over to find their food. It was fun to watch the bears turning over rocks and logs and fun to watch the kids exclaim when a bear found the food they had hidden. I should mention that at no time were there grizzlies and children in the enclosure at the same time. In case you were wondering.
The center has two wolf packs with different Alpha wolves and the walkways are quite close to the enclosures so we got some great close-up views.
Brian took our picture on the bear couch in the gift shop. Evidently it’s the thing to do because everyone was getting their picture taken there.
Wherein we meet Karl Malone
In general car shopping is not our favorite thing. Root canals aren’t far behind. Sue and I set out and our car shopping day didn’t start out so well. Our travels took us to Karl Malone Toyota where we were helped by a nice salesman who was obviously uninformed. Everything he told us about the car warranties seemed odd. When we questioned him, he just dug a bigger hole for himself. I don’t think he was intentionally misleading us, just didn’t really understand what was going on.
Eventually we decided to have him work up some numbers on one of the Toyota Corollas that we drove. He had been telling us all along that Karl Malone was at the dealership that day and we could go in and have our picture taken with him. Sue wasn’t interested in a picture, but I jokingly asked if he really wanted us to do that, because we’d need to tell him about the warranty confusion. He said that was fine. So we went inside and were introduced to Karl.
First off, I should say that he’s tall. But you were expecting that. He’s also still in good shape. We didn’t really intend to lay our concerns on the table, but then Karl asked us if we had a good experience shopping for cars that day. Wrong thing to ask! Sue has no qualms about telling lots of important people what she thinks, usually in a kind manner, so she told Karl that she was frustrated about the information we were getting about the warranty. Karl tried to help us, but it was quickly clear that he was in over his head and asked our salesman to get the manager.
When we started questioning the manager it became painfully obvious that our salesman was completely wrong about all the warranty details he was telling us (no, Toyotas don’t come with a 5 year, 60,000 mile bumper to bumper warranty; that warranty is 3 year, 36,000 miles). I finally asked to speak with the manager privately and went off to express my frustration at the incorrect information we had been given. The manager corrected everything and about that time Karl wandered over to see what was going on.
I told him he could get the details from the manager, but Karl insisted on hearing the issue in person. After hearing everything, Karl apologized and said that he wanted people to have a good experience buying cars at his place. If we weren’t having a good experience, he suggested that we not buy a car from him. He didn’t want us walking away from the experience frustrated; that wasn’t what they were all about. I thanked him, said we would finish getting numbers on the car and our trade-in, and then we would leave and look at some other cars, and if we decided we liked the Toyota, we would come back.
That was surprising to us. So often we are pressured to buy at car dealers and to have the owner of the dealership tell us his first concern was a positive car buying experience was a fresh view of things. To then have him back it up by telling us to walk away was completely unexpected. He could easily have blown everything off or just let his manager handle it. But he was personally involved to ensure we were happy and we really appreciated that. He’s “The Mailman” and he wanted to deliver.
So did we eventually buy the car? No. That might have been a nice end to the story, but we weren’t in love with the Corolla, and eventually bought another car later that day. But we appreciated Karl’s attitude and involvement. When I told a salesman at another dealership that we had met Karl Malone, they were surprised that he was actually there. “You mean, he actually goes to his dealership?” was one reaction. Not only was he there, but he was interested in what was happening. Karl’s manager told me that Karl expects things to go a certain way and for the customer’s experience to be a certain way and when it isn’t, the results are not pretty.
I know some of you are wondering why he didn’t just give us a screaming deal. I mean, he can afford it, right? I’ve thought about that and concluded that although maybe he personally can afford it, his dealership still needs to make money to support the employees and he can’t just go around taking thousands off for everyone who complains. Otherwise, everybody would be in there griping. Instead, he gave us a reason to return.
Karl, it was nice to meet you and thanks for your involvement and suggestion. While we didn’t buy from you this time, we feel like we could return there for our next car and know what you expect.
San Diego Mormon Battalion Historic Site
After getting completely soaked at the closing of Sea World, we headed over to the San Diego Mormon Battalion Historic Site. We looked a little worse for the wear, but the sister missionary from Idaho Falls who gave us the tour was very understanding. Scott and I had never been there and a couple of years ago when I was attending National PTA Convention in San Diego, a group of us went to Old Town San Diego for dinner and a tour. To our disappointment, it was closed for remodeling and we could only see the outside. Brian got to visit on the last day in his mission because the Carlsbad Mission has a tradition of taking missionaries there just before they go home. He told us it was all high-tech and cool, so we were interested to see it. It is very well-done and interesting and we even saw our neighbor, Marvin Payne, portraying one of the characters in a moving photo, Harry Potter-style. During the presentation, one of the tour members is called up to get dressed in typical Mormon Battalion gear, so Brian volunteered. Or maybe we volunteered him. Anyway, here he is as a Mexican War-era soldier.
The story of the Mormon Battalion is quite interesting, and if you’d like to read more about one of the longest infantry marches in US military history, click here.