In late 1988 I was traveling on business and had a three hour layover at the Pittsburgh airport. That was a long time but not long enough to do any sightseeing. So that just left me with wasting time in the airport. I decided to go to find the newsstand to get a book to help pass the time. I was pleasantly surprised to see that they had an actual shopping mall in the airport. After doing some shopping (and some buying!) I decided to check out the food court. Mostly there were unhealthy fast food type shops. I was in one of my extremely healthy eating stages so none of this was appealing to me in the least.
But then I stumbled upon a pretzel shop. It was called Auntie Anne's. I'd never cared for pretzels as I didn't like the salt at all. Yuck. But this pretzel shop had a lot of different kinds of pretzels without salt. And get this, you could even get them without butter. Another of my food dislikes - butter. Yuck.
So I opted for a pretzel. Oh my goodness, these were by far the best pretzels I'd ever had. After just one pretzel, I was hooked. After that I tried to route all my flights through Pittsburgh. I'd buy a dozen pretzels and take them home with me. They reheat really nicely. So Mike finally got to try one of the pretzels I had been raving about.
They didn't have all that many locations yet but they had franchise opportunities available. After quite a bit of discussion over many months, Mike and I decided we would purchase a franchise and open a store in Bellevue Square. So I contacted Auntie Anne's to inquire about a franchise. We were approved and everything was going along fine until they asked where we wanted our store located. Wouldn't you know, it turned out that just three days prior they had sold the franchise for Bellevue Square.
We were a little disappointed but at the same time we were very happy there would be an Auntie Anne's at our favorite mall. We frequented that store many times each week - we were known there by all the employees.
Anyway, back to the present. We are on their mailing list and get an email from them monthly. Yesterday when I checked my email there was a special notice from them. Today they were having their 20th Anniversary Celebration. To celebrate, they were giving away free pretzels - your choice of Original or Cinnamon Sugar. So we got on the internet to see if there was one close to us. Phew, lucky us, we were only 20 miles from an Auntie Anne's.
So Wazzu, Mike, and I headed off to get our free pretzels. We had figured since we were driving all that way, we might as well buy a bag full to bring home. Sure enough when we got there they had a guy standing out front saying "free pretzels." Cool. The line was only three or four people! We got to the front of the line and they gave each of us a pretzel. When they handed me my pretzel I stated that I'd also like to buy some. They informed me that I couldn't buy any as today they were free. I figured they misunderstood me. I know you get a free pretzel but I also wanted to PAY for some. They then reiterated to me that pretzels are free. You can't buy any until 4pm when the give-away ends.
I have never been to a store that wouldn't sell you something! Usually give-aways are to entice you to come to the store and buy something. But not here. It was truly a "free lunch."
But we really did want some to take home since we had driven quite a ways. So we wandered around the mall while we ate our pretzels. When we finished, we went back to get another one for each of us. I know they recognized us as not too many people come with their service dog. But when they saw us they welcomed us right back in asking us if the dog liked her pretzel. You bet she did! I truly think Wazzu and I could live on Auntie Anne's pretzels. Mmmmm.
This afternoon when we set up a few obstacles to practice agility with Boogie, quite a crowd gathered to watch. Boogie did very nicely but we sure need to be able to practice consistantly as we have a LOT of work to do.
We had another little chore to do today as well which involved a short drive in the RV. Since we weren't going that far we didn't install Slugger's special built in chair. This completely blew his mind so he decided to sit in the dashboard. We've seen many RV's go down the road with a tiny dog on the dashboard. But we've never seen one nearly this big.
Oh, and he was shaking the entire time. What a silly boy.
Debbie
2/2/08
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