I handled all the rah rah yay community stuff from my day at WordCamp Portland right away. Really right away. I was prompt. I needed to get all that sunny lovey stuff out before the bitter anti-social Cami decided to shove it all deep down inside. So I woke up early Sunday morning.

Um.. okay. I woke up Sunday morning. But it was actually in the morning so it was early, for afternoon.

I rubbed the sleep from my eyes. I scratched my… temples. I stretched a huge stretch. Picked up my iphone to send a good morning message and read about the world outside my bedroom on the twitters. And facebook. And path. And to look at pretty pictures on instagram. I tapped my fingers. I twiddled my thumbs. I realized I was really thirsty and I had to face reality. Harsh reality.

You see on my coffee table in the living room sat a small plastic tub. The tub was full of rice. Rice and my precious MacBook Pro.

Why was my computer sitting in a tub of rice? Sadly it was not some bizarre MacBook sushi recipe. It was sitting in the rice for the usual reason you’d have an expensive electronic device sitting in a bag, bin, or box of rice. It got wet.

After the event we were all in a hurry to get out of there and over to the after party (the real unconference if you ask me). So I did what anyone would do. I tossed my bag in the back of my friend’s car where it was locked up safe so I wouldn’t have to lug it around with me.

And there it sat safely until I pulled it out and set it on my lap on the way home. As he dropped me off I noticed my lap was damp. And no, I hadn’t wet myself.

Unfortunately.

I guess my water bottle lid wasn’t screwed on tight enough because it leaked. And by “leaked” I mean it was completely empty by the time I opened my bag to see what was going on. And all I could think to do was toss my laptop in the rice, curl up, and go to sleep.

And at that vaguely early hour on Sunday I had to deal with the situation. Because I was thirsty. I wanted some tea and water and I knew to get it I would have to walk through the living room where the tub of rice would stare at me accusingly. So I bit the bullet, got the tea, pulled my laptop out of the rice, shook it out, and headed back to bed.

When I booted up my naughty little computer all was well. All was good. It was like nothing happened. It was fucking magical. In a state of great joy I wrote a blog post about WordCamp, posted it, and was just getting to the linking on social networks when suddenly my screen began to shimmer. And then everything went wiggly. Then wibbly wobbly.

And then it was a whole screen full of fucking stripes.

STRIPES!

No one wants a screen full of stripes on their monitor! As a matter of fact striped backgrounds should be banned. Outlawed. They should come with a jail term.

Eventually, after lots of rice baths and time sitting open in front of a bunch of fans my trusty little laptop seems to be okay.

But I pity the next person who brings a beverage anywhere near it.