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

[amelia-eve.livejournal.com]

Well the Leakeys are considered quasi-charlatans by many anthropologists, so I wouldn't be too worried about what they say about Coca-Cola. Snopes has a whole section devoted to Coke myths, and most of them don't amount to much. If anything, it's the fizzing action. Also, your computer is not organic, so it's not going to respond the same way as a bunch of old bones. But, all in all, whew!

I don't think anyone has ever thought I should have eyes of a different color than what I've got. My coloring is basically Mediterranean, so nothing but brown would really go. Though my brother's eyes are hazel and my sister's are gray. They take after the WASP side more.

[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]

Aieee! I will take this averted tragedy as the One True Reason I Shouldn't Have a Laptop, because I would have beCoked it ages ago. I'm glad your computer is okay!

I've heard lots of evil things about Coke, too, although I keep forgetting to do the "baby tooth overnight in a glass of coke" experiment (if you want to do it, too, I have a goodly supply of baby teeth and can mail you one! :D ) to show the girls how corrosive and nasty it can be on one's chompers and innards. What I want to know is, why is it supposed to be root beer and not coke that you pour on battery connector/node thingies to clean off crusty residue? Dennis swears it HAS to be root beer- no other carbonated beverage will do!

As for eyes, interesting question! When Zoe used to be blonder, I'd get a lot of comments about how unusual it was for a light-haired child to have such dark brown eyes. I guess people just expect blondes to be blue-eyed. Beyond that, though, I've never really thought of it beyond not being attracted to blue-eyed men.

[bowdlerized.livejournal.com]

Yeep! I'm so glad the laptop seems to have survived. Recently my laptop fell from my rather tall bed onto my hardwood floor because of sheer carelessness (bedspread wasn't straight and I stupidly yanked it), but its vital signs seem stable now.

While I've never thought that someone ought to have eyes of a particular color based on personality, I guess I'd associate baby-blue eyes with youth/purity of spirit, owing to the fact that babies have them.

...I want a sandwich.

[lindyhoppr.livejournal.com]

Man, I love reading your journal, I am always learning new things!

I have just joined up on paperback swap.

I have to say, even after two years, I am surprised that CPT Cohn's eyes are brown; not blue. But I get pretty vivid preconcieved notions of what people look like, and it is often hard for me to reconcile the truth with the way I want people to look.

I still am mad about Garrison Keilor and the Car Talk guys.