Rest In Peace

Just a quick update on the 'situation':

After the daiquiris threatened to put a terminal end to my keyboard, we knew we had to spring into some fast action if it was going to be salvaged...

First, we made a pitcher of daiquiris to brace ourselves with.

Then, we had sex.

Then we lazed around in bed for 4 hours, discussing what we might like to do tonight, and whether I needed a nap.

Then I got up, and got down to the serious business of calling my friend in B.C. for the low, low price of just 99 cents for 30 minutes. Then I took a refreshing stroll around the block, munched on some carrot sticks for sustenance and announced to the empty room:

"I will save this keyboard or die trying, dammit!'

I armed myself with rags, paper towels, a pen cap, hydrogen-peroxyde, a steak knife, and 2 Q-tips. I meant to grab the rubbing alcohol instead of the peroxyde, and I paid dearly for that mistake, but more on that later. I also could have used more than just 2 Q-tips, but it was not to be.

Note to self: add Q-tips to grocery list.

First, using the knife, I pried off all the individual keys. I do not recommend this to the average joe, because frankly, it was disgusting. I will not tell you of all the horrors that I found under there, because that would knock this blog into a whole nother rating system. I cleaned and cleaned so whole-heartedly that I burned the tips of my fingers with the peroxyde and they are now permanently white and wrinkled.

Then I replaced the keys, which took an absurd amount of time because other than Ctrl, I couldn't remember where any of them belonged. Eventually I got this clever little puzzle all pieced together, and with just the right amount of jiggling, the shift and the ctrl keys both regained their functions. As you can tell, the E is Eing away, just as nicely as always.

There was one snafu.

For some reason, I couldn't get the space bar back in and working. And the space bar is an important key! Mysentenceswouldlookalotlikethiswithoutit,andthatsuredoesget
annoyingafterawhile,doesn'tit?

So anyway, since I have no idea what that pause button did, I figured it could be sacrificed, so I put it where the space bar belongs. It gets the job done, ultimately, but I was not satisfied with it. You see, the truth is, and I do appreciate your discretion on this: I have mushroom thumbs.

Shhhh! Not so loud! Stop with all the laughter, really, it's starting to hurt my feelings now. Simmer down.

Sim, simmer.

Okay, yes, it's true, my thumbs are shaped like mushrooms above the knuckle. They're squat little suckers, the mushroom occurs right after the knuckle, I have no space in between. They're bulbous little biatches. And short, too. So with my fingers on the other keys, I couldn't reach the little pause button. What to do, what to do?

Well, I did have one brilliant idea, one which has probably occurred to many of you already:

popsicle sticks.

I was astounded when Jason told me that we had no spare popsicle sticks just lying around. Well I made that boy sit down and get licking. Popsicles, I mean. Get your mind out of the gutter.

Now keep in mind that after a brilliant high school career, I had an even more brilliant university experience. I'm a bright little bulb. So when it came to attaching said popsicle stick to the pause button, I used the logical choice: scotch tape. The popsicle stick was just a little too long, but I didn't want to cut it because then I would get splinters, and you know what a pain those can be! So I gave up another crummy key that I'm sure I'll never use - the one with a picture of a page with an arrow on it. I've never used it in my life; I'm sure I won't miss it. Jason wore his dubious face throughout all this and tried to keep quiet, but he couldn't do it.

"You're doing that the girl way", he said. "You should let me do it the man way."
Right.
"Does the man way involve duct tape?"

Well, no, it doesn't. He sacrificed yet another "useless' key that I assured him I could live without, since I didn't even know what it was for; the scroll lock key.

He got out his toolbox.
Uh oh.

He screwed the damn stick right unto that button!
And you know what? It didn't work as well as the scotch tape button. Hah!

So yeah, it looks a little funny now. And sadly, the space bar button was not even affected by the daiquiris, it was simply the tragic result of my steak knifery. Goodbye, space bar, we'll miss you.

And the peroxyde, you ask, what happened with that?
Well, Madame La Dropski was gesturing just a tad too wildly, and it landed on the carpet, and glug, glug, glug, long story short, my carpet now has polka dots!