This week has been a roller coaster week.  This is just one of the incidents:

I’d been working for almost 12 hours non stop but hadn’t made much of a dent on my to do list, so I decided to get a large glass of Ribena and sit down to get just one more big thing out of the way.  I don’t know how it happened but I do know Norman was sitting on my right hand while I tried to use my mouse (his way of informing me he requires attention) and I reached for the Ribena.  The result was the sticky purple liquid ALL over my laptop.

After a bit of squealing I pulled out the power lead and turned the computer upside down, just as the screen went black and all the lights went out. Realising that it had probably gone to laptop heaven, I focused on saving the carpet, the desk, a cushion…and those velour trousers (I said they were comfy.  I’m not going to stop wearing them).  And by the time I finished…the laptop had rebooted, all on its own.

Unbelievably, it was still working the next morning, (although the space bar was clearly very sticky underneath as I wrote several emails that looked like astreamofconciousnessastherewasnothingseperatinganything) but at lunchtime I ended up taking my desk to pieces to try to replace the power cord as it wasn’t charging.  It turned out it wasn’t the power cord.  The laptop may have been resurrected, but it was only short term…it really was on its way to laptop heaven.

I hurtled down to IT, cornered the only IT man who knows what he is doing, explaining I’d had a cat / Ribena incident (a first for them, apparently) and…to cut a long story short…we had just enough time to copy over my work onto a spare laptop that I now have on loan.  The problem is that ‘liquid spillages’ are not covered by warranty.  And my laptop has only been mine for about 4 weeks.  ooops.  We wondered of we could convince anyone it wasn’t actually a spillage.  I suggested we explained the issues were the result of a really enthusiastic sneeze.  But apparently that wouldn’t work.  So I’m just hoping it can be fixed without too much cost.  And quickly, as I think this spare laptop may have been build by Fisher Price.

But anyway, It’s Friday.  The roller coaster is over for a few days.  Cheers!  (I’m going for wine tonight, rather than Ribena.  And I’m putting this laptop safely away first ) :o)