Apres Moi, Le Deluge...Or, I Am a Klutz

Coffee is a remarkable substance.

It has self-replication and multiplication abilities that seemingly defy the basic law of conservation of matter. Some time ago, I was in a diner that advertised a "bottomless cup of coffee," so I asked the waitress, if one overturned such a cup, would it flood the planet? (We didn't see her near our table much after that.)

Even more curiously, I have found the the consumption of a single cup of coffee triggers an improbable series of biochemical processes that makes it necessary to stop at every travel plaza on the New York State Thruway and/or Mass Pike. Again, there is a very basic violation of the law of conservation of matter going on here.

I bring up the subject of coffee because I happened to spill a full cup of it this morning, and the sheer volume of liquid coursing over the desk and--more to the point--into my MacBook Pro was far greater than the initial quantity in the cup. I could literally watch it increasing before my eyes. If I hadn't been in such a panic to unplug things and rescue various electronic devices from the deluge I probably would have wrung out the entire spent roll of paper towels and attempted to develop a series of formulas that can calculate the extent to which coffee replicates itself in a given unit of time.

However, my rescue attempts were futile; the MacBook made a "pfffff" noise, there was the smell of burning plastic, and the screen went dark. That's never good. I took it down to the Apple Store in Crossgates Mall and as soon as they tried to boot it up, pink smoke billowed out from under the keyboard. Leave it to Apple to even design stylish billows of smoke. Either that or Jeannie had been trapped in my computer. Still, it rather stunned the Genius Bar folks. Needless to say, there was a mass shaking of heads that was reminiscent of a particularly tragic episode of ER. I am a Toastmaster; that now means that I am the master of a computer that is toast. So I guess it's time to get a new computer... They are, at the moment, seeing if they can rescue my hard drive or at the very least the files on it. Happily, most important stuff is backed up.

I will say thanks and kudos to the staff of the Crossgates Apple Store; every time I have ever had some sort of problem (and happily there have never been too many) they have always been exceedingly helpful and pleasant. I guess my only complaint is that I have been using Apple computers literally longer than most of them have been alive...

P.S. Robert/Kristin: do Lucy or Trixie have an extra sippy cup I can have?