Mary's sister's family gave us a little stress relief ball for Christmas. We really like it. It has the shape and surface texture of a golf ball (dimples), but double the diameter of a real golf ball. When you squeeze it, it deforms but slowly returns to a spherical shape. It does take a little effort to squeeze it ... this is no wussy ball.

My stepson Matthew injured his thumb last October. Right now he has little range of motion and little grip strength in that hand. He found that the stress relief ball gave him just the exercise he needs to perhaps improve his grip strength. We wanted to obtain another ball for him to use, because we really like this one a lot for ourselves.

Margaret said she bought the ball at Long's (drug store). We visited several but we could not find the ball and some of the stores told us they never carried it.

The box has some information and a part number. It is made in China (naturally) but is distributed in this country by E&B Giftware under the Park Avenue brand name. It has a part number of PA3251GF, which of course returns no matches under Google. (The ball also comes in the form of a baseball or basketball, using the same part number but different suffixes.)

The E&B web site has a comment form, so I asked at which stores I might obtain another ball. That was several days ago, and I've not heard anything back yet. Whatever happened to customer service?

Speaking of annoyances and terrible customer service, I called our two credit unions (Mary and I bank separately) to find out whether their branches were open today. Both credit unions put me on hold so long I gave up. (The branch of main interest was indeed open, and we were able to pay our bills.)

On another topic altogether, I am posting using XJournal, a Mac OS X client for LJ. I'm not yet sure whether I like it. It's not that there's really anything wrong with it. I would just prefer an email-type interface, particularly the ability of Eudora to save a draft email. I use Eudora a lot to draw text memos and notes because it lets me save with or without a destination email address or a subject if I just want to jot a quick reminder for later. I also like that the web interface to LJ does transparent auto-saves. But of course one is not always connected. (What!?) XJournal can save a draft post to a file, but I'd prefer that it happen more transparently and without my having to specify a file. I've also downloaded iJournal and some others, and there will be plenty of opportunity to experiment with them. (Tomorrow evening we'll be taking off to spend several days at Disneyland with Mary's sister's family, trusty PowerBook G4 in tow and wifi-enabled room already reserved. I hope to post while on the road.)

(For those who wonder why I'm not at square dance tape group this weekend, now you know my secret.)

Tags: gripe
Current Mood: annoyed