Gingerly

My office this morning smells like alcohol--not so much a morning-after-the-bash smell as an antiseptic-medical-office smell.

First thing this morning I used Q-tips and rubbing alcohol to remove sticky white lint from my laptop computer keyboard, which worked just fine, thank you very much. My computer is now up and running and apparently none the worse for its baptism by ginger ale, which I was sipping yesterday afternoon to hold down some mild nausea while finishing up my final fall syllabus, when the phone rang and I reached to answer it and tipped the ginger ale bottle onto the keyboard.

It was my favorite kind of ginger ale, too: Reed's Extra Strong. Pity to waste it on a keyboard.

So there I was trying to absorb information about my radiation schedule, one hand holding the phone and the other grabbing a wad of tissues and trying to sop up spilled ginger ale. Do you know what happens to tissues when they get soaked in ginger ale and rubbed across a bumpy keyboard? When I was done, my keyboard appeared to be growing white hair.

So I called my favorite IT guy and followed instructions: unplug the computer, dry it off, turn it upside down to let it drain, walk away and hope for the best. I'm getting pretty good at that last bit. Lots of practice.

And the hope paid off: after gingerly cleaning the sticky white lint off the keyboard, I am now ready to get back to what I was doing before I was so rudely interrupted...but if I'm going to tackle that last syllabus, I really need a drink.

Anyone have any ginger ale?