I’m a member of Office Depot’s rewards program. I had a reward that was going to expire at the end of November, and didn’t really need any office supplies, but they had paper towels available, so I used my reward to buy a package.

Naturally, they wanted a review (and offered $2 in rewards for writing one), so I obliged:

They’re paper towels – and they were in stock!

What can you say about a package of paper towels? That they were the brand I prefer. And available. That they fit on my dispenser. And in my kitchen. And they’re mine.

(With apologies to Erich Segal)

I’m not sure that the review will be helpful for someone trying to decide between brands of paper towels, but that was not a requirement.

Two months ago, I mentioned that I’d spent a couple of hours on hold with Grohe to get them to replace the pull-out spray head on our kitchen faucet, which I was supposed to receive at the end of October.

October came and went; I contacted Grohe again (this time by e-mail!) and got a reply a few days later, telling me that the part would be shipped in late November. They missed that deadline, too, but not by much – they shipped it on December 1 and I got it yesterday.

This morning, when I was ready to install it, I discovered two little doohickeys in the box with no explanation or instructions.

The white one looked like what was in the old spray head, but I couldn’t figure out how to install it, so I Googled and discovered that they were flow restrictors. I didn’t find instructions on how to install them, so I installed the spray head without one.

Boy, what a difference, especially when it comes to dislodging stuck-on food from a pan! And it’s easy to turn down the water for normal use, so I don’t even feel guilty about having a higher maximum flow available than I am probably legally entitled to have.

I still can’t figure out how to put in the restrictor so that it would stay in, but I don’t feel compelled to find the answer.