Eliptical Days

For my upcoming birthday, I asked for one thing, and one thing only.
I know! How selfless of me!
Well. Ok. I confess. It's expensive, so I decided to cut Achilles (formerly known as 'husband'...who-incidently-is so bored that he has taken to signing up for all the "free-bies"(or not-so free) he can get his hunt-n-peckin'-mouse-clickin' fingers on. But that's this whole 'nother post. gr.) a nice break.
I got online and ordered myself an Elliptical.
For those of you who don't know what that is... Look HERE.
I wasn't supposed to receive it until the 17th of October... yet I was pleasently suprised, when Tuesday, the UPS guy brought the big, beautiful box up to my front door with the super-sized dolly...and left all 110 lbs of it for ME to carry up 2 rather obnoxious stairs and drag it into my utilityroom...because they don't "do that". And I can't rely on Achilles for help.
I didn't bat an eye, my adrenaline pumping at the sheer joy of finally owning my favorite excercise equiptment on the planet, and I dragged that bad-boy right up the stairs and in the house with much grunting and groaning. I considered that a workout in itself, so I logged in my excercise points for WW, and called it a night.Yesterday, I finally was able to open the box and began the massive task of putting the thing together.
Only.
The first thing I noticed was that the styrofoam was broken up a bit. Little bells at the back of my mind were sounding, faintly.Still, I pressed on.
When I began to take parts out, I noticed they looked a bit dinged and scratched. Hm. Well, mostly on the bottom, and who sees the bottom, right? Plus, the blister-pack with the nuts and bolts is retaped shut, but all the pieces are there, so it doesn't matter, right?
I begin the arduous taks of screwing the base bolts in. It took almost 2 hours to jut get the base part put together. And they had to line up precisely, or the next piece wouldn't sit right. Ack.When I took the handles out of plastic, I noticed one of the rubber grips is torn.
BLAST.
now I have to stop....call the stupid "we-always-have-a-busy-signal"1800 customer service number... call 1800info to find an alternate number for the company... and not freak out when he says that I have to call the company that origionally sent it to me, who had already advised me to call the manufacturer in the first place.
::enter visual silent temper-tantrum here::
I promptly email the customer service at the company that sent it... and say, specifically and emphatically, that all this is not my fault, and that when forking out such a huge sum of money, I expect an exchange at their own expense, time and effort.
I emailed because, quite frankly, I couldn't be responsible for my mouth when I was that frustrated, disapointed, and outright mad about all the work I will now have to do to disassemble all those ^&*(% parts because of the sheer aggrivation it was to make them all fit precisely. And to get them all back into the box in order to tape it shut again would have been hilarious, were it not for the steam coming out of my ears.
When I got home from church last night and logged on, much to my suprise, there was a short but sweet email from the company:
"We will pick up the defective item and replace it with a new one promptly. You should have a delivery date with-in 3-5 business days. We're sorry for the inconvenience".
While I'm happy they're fixing the boo-boo... I am back to limited excercise again until they bring me my new one.
Oh well. Surely the temper tantrums I'm throwing are worth at least one activity point for WW, right?

"Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise"
~~ Sigmund Freud