I’ve mentioned my love for Kwik Trip before, and I’m not alone. They were recently voted the best gas station in America in a USA Today Readers Choice poll for the sixth straight year. It’s a well-deserved honor! Savvy marketing, clean bathrooms, fresh-baked donuts, excellent fried chicken, and a stellar rewards program – what’s not to love? It’s the only petrol station I’ve been to since the day we moved here two years and nine months ago.
Just don’t confuse them with Oklahoma’s QuikTrip – what a funny spelling, weirdos!
Now I have yet another reason to sing their praises – all because of my own dumbassery. Two weeks ago, on Memorial Day, Kwik Trip was advertising a Daily Deal: an Elite Car Wash (their top of the line) for $7.99, normally $12, with any in-store purchase. This is a helluva deal, because in addition to the foam bath, high pressure wash, and spot rinse included with the lower tiers, you get a back massage, a free glass of champagne, and are serenaded by an orchestra while attendants buff and polish your vehicle by hand.
(J/K, but you do get a Bug/Salt Buster, Wheel Cleaner, and RainShield Vehicle Protectant, so still a good value.)
Plus, we needed milk and half-and-half anyway, so I stopped in, grabbed my dairy, bought the car wash, and left.
Without taking the receipt. The receipt with the car wash code on it.
Normally, when I splurge for a gas station car wash (I often just drag out the hose and a bucket and do it myself in the driveway), I pay for it when I’m filling up at the pump, and the receipt spits out automatically. Otherwise, I never bother printing up a receipt for grocery purchases. I’d rather save a tree, and I figure a few thousand paper receipts is the equivalent of a small maple sapling, so eventually, my sacrifice for Mother Earth will pay off. Go, me.
I realized my error when I got home, so I immediately reached out to Kwik Trip corporate through their online contact form. It took them a couple of days to respond, and when they did, they said I’d have to go into the store where I’d made the purchase for assistance. Well, life stuff happened, I was busy with work, yadda yadda. Suddenly a couple of weeks had passed and the whole thing seemed fruitless. Tara told me to just chalk it up as a loss and move on, but then I found myself gassing up over the weekend and figured I had nothing to lose, so I explained my dilemma to the cashier. Two minutes later, she handed me a printed receipt with my car wash code. I nearly did a backflip right there in the store, but I didn’t want to knock over their fresh banana display. Plus, you know, I couldn’t do a backflip if my life depended upon it. But the sentiment was there.
I swear, I’ve never been so happy to recoup eight dollars. Really, it was more the principle of the matter. I haven’t redeemed my car wash yet, because it rained the next day and more is forecast this week, but you can bet your ass I’ll be guarding that piece of paper with my life.
Goodreads, Poor Reviews
Now that I’m walking outside most days instead of hitting the treadmill, my torrid (for me) reading pace has slowed down a bit. Don’t get me wrong; I’m still knocking ’em back and on pace to crush my Goodreads reading goal, but with 4-5 hours’ less reading time every week now, it’s taking me a little bit longer to finish each book.
Thanks to someone(s)…probably LA and/or NGS, two bloggers who frequently write about books, for the following inspiration. Either or both have mentioned Goodreads reviews.
I rely heavily on what other readers have to say and will skim a few reviews before committing to a book. I have found that, unless an average review is at least 3.7 stars, I’m probably not going to be a fan of the book.
There are, of course, a few notable exceptions. I tend to enjoy high-concept books, especially those concerning time travel and reincarnation, a little more than most. Beautyland, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, Recursion, and – most recently – Our Infinite Fates were all solid 5-star reads for me, a little lower for others.
(The tagline for that last one: They’ve loved each other in a thousand lifetimes. They’ve killed each other in every one. Totally my kind of premise. I loved it. Go read Our Infinite Fates if that’s your jam, too.)
On the other hand, there’s The Perfect Marriage. The Goodreads community gave Jeneva Rose’s novel 3.98 stars; I despised it so much, a 1-star review wasn’t enough: I complained bitterly about it on my blog, too.
My point is, for the most part I can depend on those peer reviews, though they’re not perfect. What bugs me is when a reader leaves a review that includes a lengthy plot summary. This happens all the time and it drives me crazy. If I’ve read the book, I already know what it’s about. If I’m thinking about reading the book, I already know what it’s about. Just tell me whether it’s good or bad! Talk about the writing, the pacing, the characterization. Let me know what you liked or didn’t like about it. Themes that resonated with you. Dialogue that stood out. I do not need a chapter-by-chapter play-by-play.
Here’s how I review books:
While still an enjoyable read, “Upgrade” fails to live up to Blake Crouch’s last two. It’s really worth 3.5 stars, but since Goodreads doesn’t operate that way, I’m rounding up based on the brief but thrilling appearance of two genetically modified murder hornets about 3/4 of the way through. Dear Hollywood: if you ever turn this into a movie, PLEASE spend more than a few minutes on these deadly giant wasps.
Unfortunately, while creative and well-researched, the rest of “Upgrade” just isn’t nearly as fun. Sure, there are clever touches, subtly disguised parables warning of the consequences of our current laissez-faire attitude toward monopolism and climate change. To his credit, Crouch doesn’t beat us over the head with these warnings.
What he does instead—apologies to Thomas Dolby—is blinds us with science. And math. There’s so, so much math. It’s fun at first to see Logan figure out how many seconds it will take for him to get from Point A to Point B, for instance, or to calculate his current heartrate in BPM, but he does this so often it grows stale. OK, he’s smart! We get it!
What I like about “Upgrade” is that the concept, while far-fetched, is still a little more believable than what happens in “Dark Matter” and “Recursion.”
“Upgrade” just borrows too heavily from other works. There are shades of “Jurassic Park” and “The Matrix” mixed in with Marvel and M. Night Shyamalan, an interesting yet jumbled concoction that always seems on the verge of being crushed by its own weight.
Regardless, even if I didn’t love this latest Blake Crouch outing, I liked-liked it. Which is more than I can say for a lot of books these days.
Did I mention there are giant murder hornets?
Recipes that don’t cut to the chase also annoy me. I don’t need to know that the colander you used is a treasured family heirloom or why you despise rosemary but love oregano. Just give me the ingredients and the directions!
Making chicken marsala should not involve reading a novel, regardless of how many positive reviews it has.
Mark My Words 
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