Monday Miscellany

■ A co-worker's husband (a minister, no less!) is blogging his trip to Israel. He left a bit over a week ago, and has a week more to go. He's posted some beautiful pictures, as well as his own observations and thoughts on where he is and what he's seen. Worth clicking.

■ A few weeks ago, I lambasted GE for its terrible customer service. In the meantime, I've had two extremely wonderful customer service experiences, which I'll share:

I recently "inherited" a Bang & Olufsen CD/Radio unit. It's quite beautiful, and I'm sure that it sounds great, but I had no way of knowing since I lacked the instructions. A quick perusal of the B&O website yielded no help, so I dropped the company an email explaining my plight. A few days later, I received a .pdf with everything I needed to know.

About the same time, I also "inherited" a whisk attachment for our Cuisinart Food Processor. Again, I was sure that it would be a terrific tool, but with no instructions, I had no idea how to use it. Same drill: cruise over to Cuisinart's website, poke around, no instructions, but a helpful contact form. Completed, submitted and waited. Lo and behold: last week I received a phone call from a Cuisinart rep, who offered to send me the instructions I needed, but lacked my snail mail address. The instructions arrived in todays mail.

Now THAT'S customer service!