A Saga of Cats, Coffee, and [Apple] Backup

This is a true story.

I do most of my research and writing in a home office on a MacBook Pro laptop running (foreshadowing a bit here) OS X Lion. I have two cats. One of them, the very loving and athletic Spunky, is my office mate. I start my day with a large cup of lightly roasted, conical burr ground, hand dripped coffee. Spunky starts her day draped across my shoulders.

This Tuesday, as I was lifting my coffee to my mouth for a sip (just after I had submitted my V-Person report to our editors for review), Spunky jumped off my shoulders and rubbed her jaw against my wrist. Most of the 16 ounce cup of coffee spilled onto the keyboard of my computer. The screen went dark. Disaster.

I turned the machine upside down to let the coffee drain out. (The latest MacBooks don’t have a removable battery and I don’t have the tri-drive tools to open the case.) Next, with my iPhone, I got on the web to schedule a “Genius” (technical support) appointment at my local Apple Store. The first available appointment was for 1:30pm that day—a long eight hours after the spill. My office is six miles from the Apple Store.