a tragedy averted, and a question

[constance]

I had dinner once with Richard Leakey as part of a programs committee event at my university, and he told our group, after the student sitting next to him ordered a Coke, that they sometimes soaked their especially filthy digging instruments in Coke before washing them, because Coke was so famously corrosive, and they'd never been able to find a made-for-the-purpose dissolving agent so cheap and effective.

It was a little rude of him to put his fellow diner off her drink of choice in that way, wasn't it? But his story has left me with a residual frisson about Coke. I do still drink it, and more than I should, but I sometimes wonder as I'm drinking it what exactly it's doing to my inner workings.

And it's not altogether surprising that the frisson developed into a fully-fledged Episode yesterday when I was putting together a new weed-eater and through a series of events now hazy in my mind managed to tip a Coke straight into my laptop.

I took the entire thing apart as quickly as I could, patted each piece dry, and put it all back together again, and nothing; and I had visions of the Coke eating away at my computer until it just dissolved completely into a puddle of useless goo. But I guess all it needed was a little time to dry out, because it's been gradually coming back: first the power supply, then the monitor, the hard drive. Last night before bed I got the beginnings of the operating system but not all of it, and this morning I reset the clock and was back in business. Thank fuck.

Not that I'm not making absolutely sure to get current backups. The puddle of goo is still floating around in my brain. But I'm a lucky girl to be typing this, this morning, and boy do I know it.

:::

Also, on Friday, one of my coworkers made some crack about my baby-blue eyes over the phone, and when I informed him that my eyes are not, in fact, blue, he had to come downstairs to take a look for himself before he would believe me. "Huh," he said to me. "I guess you just strike me as the kind of person who ought to have blue eyes."

And ever since then, I've been wondering: what sort of person ought to have blue eyes? Have you ever felt that someone's eyes should be a certain color, regardless of what color their eyes actually are?

Comments

[ellen-fremedon.livejournal.com]

No one's ever told me what color my eyes ought to be. Hair's another story. About half the people who meet me online before meeting me in RL say I look exactly the way they pictured me. The other half, pretty much unanimously, say they expected me to have curly dark brown hair. (It's straight, fine, and toffee-colored.)

[laurelwood.livejournal.com]

I've only seen pictures of you, but I'm in the "You look exactly the way I'd pictured you" camp. It was almost eerie how perfectly you matched up with my mental image of you. I'd love to know how the brain comes up with material to furnish a face for someone it's never met. Why sometimes is it right on, and sometimes, as in my case with dementordelta, is it so way off as to be ridiculous? (My mind's eye gave her long, black curly hair and a dark complexion.)

[tofty.livejournal.com]

I was in the "Ellen has dark curly hair" camp, but I totally agree with you about dementordelta. I still cannot get over the fact that she's a blonde!

[tofty.livejournal.com]

Ha! Until I saw a picture of you (on a con report, I think?), I was in the dark-curly-hair camp, I admit. I never thought as far as your eye color, at least not consciously, but I suspect that if I'd been asked, pre-picture, I'd have said dark brown. (But they're light, aren't they?) I'm not sure, though, that I'd have thought that you ought to have dark eyes. :-?