{Did you catch that bit of foreshadowing there?}
One morning a little over a month ago, my L key stopped working. Very inconvenient wouldn't you say? I use L a lot. Why couldn't it have been an X or Z?
So I took the whole thing into the Apple store at the City Creek Mall downtown Salt Lake. Conveniently I was already planning to be down that way for lunch with some friends.
I told the Apple gurus that my L key wouldn't work. I didn't know why. They asked about any other keys not working? Well, the left bracket key was also broken. But that wasn't working because I had had a small spill of my chocolate shake one morning....over a year ago. And I don't use the bracket key much anyhow.
I was surprised to have the Apple guru inform me that likely the two events were related. How could that be, I wondered out loud? It was a year ago? He said that with liquid damage, it's usually just a matter of time. He told me to go home and back up my info and then bring the computer back so they could fix it for me.
{Sigh}
I asked Bryan to help me back up my MacBook stuff onto an external hard drive. And he did bring a hard drive home from work for me.
But we were getting ready to go camping. And Bryan had heavy duty deadlines at work and wasn't home much. And so it didn't get done.
In the meantime, I plugged an external keyboard into my MacBook so I could type. Usually I left it off to the side. It was big and bulky and inconvenient to reach over to maneuver around on the mouse. If I was just typing some quick comment on facebook or trying to type in an internet address for some website, I could somewhat easily reach to the side and hit the L key if need be. If I was typing a longer email or blog post, I'd bring the keyboard in front of me.
But then one early morning I was doing my regular morning routine...reading blogs as I drank my chocolate slimfast shake. I went to type a comment onto a blog I follow. Apparently I was typing a heavily L-filled comment because I decided maybe I should bring the keyboard over to the front of me. And as I grabbed the thing and tried to get all the cords to behave and get the darn thing situated in front of me....the corner of the keyboard hit the shake that was sitting up and out of the way from my MacBook...but still close enough to fly over and dump its contents all over my MacBook when struck.
Irony? That the whole reason I was using a the darn external keyboard to begin with was because of a chocolate slimfast shake spill. And then to have that unwieldy thing be the cause of another chocolate slimfast shake spill?? {Well you know, if I take any and all responsibility out of the equation and not own up to the fact that I should've learned from my mistakes to begin with and not be drinking chocolate slimfast shakes while anywhere near my computer....}
I won't repeat for you all the bad words that came out of my mouth.
I went into action, as you can imagine, trying to minimize the damage and get as much liquid off the MacBook before it seeped into the keyboard. But it was only seconds before the whole thing started making a really loud, overheating type noise. {Imagine that.} I turned it off, continued wiping up sludge, and then turned it upside down and open hoping that gravity would let some liquid drip out...and also to let the darn thing dry.
Then I had to tell Bryan.
{!!!}
But luckily for me, it was our 20th wedding anniversary that day. So he was thinking loving thoughts about me already and, though irritated, kept it in check.
A few hours later I turned the MacBook on....to see if it even would. And it did! "Quick, quick Bryan!" {I hollered.} "Let's see if we can save any data!" He was all gung-ho and grabbed the external hard drive he had brought home for this very purpose weeks earlier.
And....hold that thought.
It was full of data already.
And taking way too long to clean up and reformat.
And by too long, I mean hours.
Which meant that by the time it was ready, my MacBook had long since turned off on its own.
Toast.
It was at this point that I started mentally reviewing everything I had on my MacBook and grieving their loss. Mostly pictures. See, I also had become lazy where pictures were concerned. Because I dealt with them mostly in picasa on my MacBook when I was putting them up on my blog or facebook, I had more or less stopped downloading them to Bryan's main computer where they would be backed up. I knew that it was possible for Bryan to link up to my MacBook and just suck them over. He'd done it before. It was on my list of things to do.....
....too late.
My only saving grace....I am fairly up-to-date on my blog. So though I was losing countless pictures, I knew I had a good representation of all family activities and events on the blog.
So I took the MacBook, that was by this point in time smelling rather foully of spoiled chocolate milk, back to the Apple gurus and told them the story with all its irony and oh-me-oh-my-can-you-believe-how-stupid-I-was-???
The repairs were intense. And only slightly less expensive than buying a whole new MacBook. They had to replace so much on the thing that I more or less have a brand new MacBook anyhow.
But glory be and hallelujah! Because after weeks and weeks of having a slightly screwed up, and then completely hosed MacBook, I am finally back in business.
Because as cool as my iPad is....there's only so much it can do.
So my friends, learn from my mistakes. Back up your computer often. Don't delay getting your pictures to where they need to be to be safe. And above all, don't drink chocolate slimfast shakes for breakfast when you are reading email and blogs!
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