By Rondi Sokoloff Frieder

I started working on this blog a few weeks ago. I picked a topic, made a list of what I wanted to say, did some research, and pounded out a first draft. Then, last Tuesday, I fleshed it out, cut it here and there, and added new content. At the end of my writing session, I saved it to my Desktop and put it in a file in Word. I planned on giving it another read-through on Thursday and posting it on Friday. Everything was right on schedule. Or so I thought.

That same Tuesday night, I took the laptop into our bedroom. Normally, I leave it in the kitchen to charge for the next day. But since I would be skiing on Wednesday with my older son and his friends, I wanted to clear out a few emails before going to bed. It seemed like a good idea. Except for one false move. I put the computer on the nightstand. 

The next morning at breakfast, I opened it up. It was Inauguration Day and I wanted to watch the early morning festivities. Only when I clicked on the start button, nothing happened. The screen was black. Had I really used up a full charge the night before? I didn’t think so. But we needed to get going so I plugged in the computer for another charge and headed to the slopes.

It was a perfect morning – blue sky, fluffy snow, and NO LIFT LINES! Skiing with my son  (who was visiting from New York) was a total delight. After a few hours of enjoying the fresh powder, I went back to the house for lunch. I couldn’t wait to see the swearing in of President Biden and Vice-President Harris. I made a salad, sat down at the kitchen counter, and flipped open the laptop. The screen was still dark. What???? I pressed the “On” button. Nothing. No flashing lights, no chiming boot-up sounds, no sign of life. I picked up my phone and googled “What do I do when my MacBook Air won’t start?” 

I clicked on a video and did everything the guy said: “Press Control/Option/Shift for 7 seconds, press the start button, plug in the charger for 10 more seconds, repeat.” No change. I was beginning to panic so I googled more articles. One stopped me in my tracks. “We’ve bought a baby humidifier for our daughter who lives in our room. And I have my desk with my MacBook nearby. Can this damage my computer?” The answer was a resounding YES!!!!! Alarms began going off in my head. The humidifier in our bedroom was extremely close to the nightstand. Colorado air can be dry, especially in  winter, and I love having hot steam waft around me while I sleep. Unfortunately, this has the opposite effect on a computer.

After blasting the MacBook with a hairdryer and leaving it overnight in an air-tight plastic bag with rice, the possibility of water damage was becoming a serious reality. The next morning, (Thursday) I called Apple Care. “Oh yes,” said Ariana, the cheerful tech-support person. “A humidifier could do that. But don’t worry, I pulled up your account and you have insurance. Would you like to bring it in today? I have an appointment near your zip code at 5:15.” Except the zip code she was referring to was attached to my Denver address. I was in the mountains. “Sure,” I said. “I’ll drive down.” That’s when I remembered the blog. I always back up my longer projects on the Cloud and save them to a flash drive. But this was a shorter piece and it was going to be posted and saved on the Internet in only a few days. I had NOT backed it up. It was most likely gone. 

I drove down to Denver for my appointment at the Park Meadows Mall. Whoa, talk about culture shock. I hadn’t been inside a mall in close to a year. And the Apple Store I remembered no longer existed. After waiting on a socially distanced circle in the hall, I was ushered into a narrow room of white counters with plexiglass coverings and assigned to counter #4. The guy behind the plexiglass had a microphone wrapped around his neck and spoke to me through the speaker on my side of the partition. He scanned the appointment barcode on my phone. “Water damage, right?”  I nodded, feeling like I was in a hospital emergency room. “Well, as you can see, this isn’t a typical store right now. I’ll need to send the laptop out to the diagnosticians. They’ll call you with their findings within 24 hours. Is that alright?” I nodded again, signed something, and left feeling like I had just dropped my child off at preschool for the first time.

The tech assigned to my case called the next morning. “There’s a lot of damage, but we can fix it. Should be ready in four or five days.” Five days? I took a deep breath. “Okay,” I said. “By the way, do you think any of my files can be saved?” There was  a brief silence on the other end. “Hmm, probably not. You could pay extra for a data retrieval, but that will take longer.” “Oh,” I said. “Never mind.”

Part of me was relieved. My beloved MacBook Air could be fixed. And I had insurance, although there is a somewhat substantial deductible with this amount of damage. Still, I could carry on for a week with my old computer, even if it only holds a charge for two hours and heats up like a stovetop. But it wasn’t as bad as I had originally thought. Still, I was unnerved. Finally, the truth dawned on me. I was, like most of us, emotionally and physically attached to my electronic devices. And the main source of this affection was that gorgeous rose-gold MacBook Air.

My younger son would call this a “first world problem.” He would also tell me that I should be using GoogleDocs (which I am using right now) for all my writing. It automatically saves everything. Granted, my three novels and assorted picture book manuscripts are saved on flash drives, the Cloud, Scrivener, and PRINTED OUT and stored in binders. They have also been emailed to critique partners. But I was still upset about the lost blog and began moaning to my always supportive husband. He smiled and said, “Why don’t you write something about not putting a computer near a humidifier?” I laughed. But after speaking with a fellow writer who said, “That’s a really important topic. I don’t back up everything.” I decided to go for it. So here’s my advice if you haven’t gotten it already … BACK EVERYTHING UP ALL THE TIME. Seriously, even your smallest documents. And although I know it goes without saying-   KEEP YOUR COMPUTER AWAY FROM A HUMIDIFIER!