"Sarah, I'm hungry. Do you have any food I can steal?"
How could I have known the calamities that would come out of such simple words?
The quirky Texan hands me two packets of Quaker instant grits. "Put honey on them," she says.
I do suppose it could have been worse.
I take them back to my room across the hall, turn on my electric teapot, set a bowl down on my desk next to my laptop, and start to pour dehydrated corn-derived particles of unbridled perpetual joy into the bowl. Which, as I mentioned, sat right next to my laptop.
Oops.
Two weeks later, I'm still picking dry grit bits out of my keys. Every now and then, one of them gets jammed by grits and it's time to pull out the canned air. I think most, if not all, of the demon particles of electromechanical doom are now gone, scattered to the winds of time and of fate and of ridiculous computer problems . . . .
Well, at least the grits were darn tasty.