The Iced Tea Incident

This is our new computer. What? How could people who have so little money have a new computer? I mean, we have to contemplate going to a movie or the extravagance of books (well that last one is me). Well, this beautiful, wonderful thing is the silver lining on a tragedy. The Iced Tea Incident.

For those of you that don't know, my husband M is what you would call a "butterfingers." It hasn't always been so, but lately he drops things, fumble things. It's an inherited trait. His dad is a chronic spiller, dropper, and fumbler. It was oh so funny until it started happening to M, or should I say, to our stuff.

Now, some of these events were accompanied by a cocktail or two and as such somewhat forgivable. Like in the strawberry martini vs. Sweet Lady's digital camera event the day before our wedding last year. He was delivering the cocktail to a friend and didn't notice the ounce and half spill on the table, my camera perfectly in the line of fire. The camera lasted 8 months after that with some minor twitches. Or the slide and spill of an almost empty, watery 7&7 on Sweet Lady's keyboard, that left me almost paralyzed with fear over the death of my computer, but actually, just ended up being a few droplets in my monitor, which glow nicely even now. I back up my hard drive on the regular, just in case. It's what I get for taking the laptop to Las Vegas. He bought me both the camera and the laptop as gifts. Ironic, no? The droplets don't seem to mess anything up, so I refused his offered replacement of the laptop. That was before the economy went to hell and we could afford to do things like replace broken stuff. By the way, did you hear they have furloughed the CSU employees, both staff and faculty? That's right folks, now instead of just working for an insultingly low wage, I will be working for nothing two days out of the month! You know what they say, "It could be worse." Wait, that's not "they," I think that's my mom. Anywho...

Some of M's incidents are just garden variety spills/breaks. We have lost three of my favorite highball glasses (wedding presents and now completely unaffordable) due to excessive hand gestures, slippery fingers, etc. I bought unbreakable glasses made out of polycarbonate at Bed, Bath & Beyond to replace them. I'm no dummy. Once a slippery fingers spill actually resulted in a few droplets inside the tiny sliver of an opening of the Wii, resulting in an emergency windexing of the game inside, which took a while to get out. Wii is fine, 1 month later, so no worries. If you are noticing a technological destruction theme here, you aren't the only one.

So the Iced Tea Incident is the latest and greatest, and really the most tragic. On Monday of last week, we were in our living room. Me on my laptop and he on his (like the hipster couple that we are), when he somehow managed to topple over a completely full (unbreakable) glass of iced tea all over his keyboard. Macs are wired to shut down completely when this happens, so the screen went black and we freaked. There was iced tea everywhere. His immediate reaction was despair. Mine was "cleaning!" So I cleaned up the spill and blotted the computer.

He retreated to the bedroom to be angry at himself, like I would be. Only I'd be a crying unconsolable mess . Luckily, his parents were in town and we had dinner plans in an hour. No time to mope. During that hour, I tried to take off the top of the laptop so I could blot the insides and maybe salvage it enough so we could backup the hard drive one last time. It fought me the whole way. When I turned it on its side to unscrew the top, liquid poured out of it. I pretty much caved at that point. I mean, what do you do?

My way of dealing with things is to find the silver lining. We knew that his new school program would require him to do a ton of digital imaging, and we'd planned on eventually getting a new computer for that purpose. But because things are tight, we decided to revamp his laptop by basically taking everything off and re-installing the operating system. Then he organized everything and made sure to leave room for the programs he'd be using and the files he'd create. Luckily, he backed up a bunch. Luckily macs are incredibly awesome, because when we got the new iMac (via my favorite invention/bane of my existence: the credit card), all we had to do was hook it up to our external drive and it uploaded his last backup. The settings, passwords, bookmarks, and even the desktop wallpaper were the same. Heavenly. And it's a desktop, not a laptop, so no spilly spills will be likely to harm her.

So now, thanks to the "what's yours is mine" policy of marriage, I have a new, shiny, super fast computer with a screen so big it's like being swallowed up by the internets! Even though getting it required tragedy, it was worth the pain. So, so worth it.

Everyone has faults. God knows I have mine. Even though M's faults are few and far between they are expensive! But luckily, he's sweet and kind and wonderful enough for me to forgive him instantly. No question about it. I'd gladly trade electronics for a night laughing with him. But riddle me this: how do we laugh without electronics?