Walking through the mine fields, step lightly.

Who says my values are out of whack?

Spilled an entire glass of wine on my iPod the other night. Talk about panic. All I can say is thank god for that radtech cover I got so long ago. It absorbed the worst of the wine, and I was able to just slip the pod out and wipe it off. Then I handwashed the cover in the kitchen sink and left it to dry over night—good as new! Way to go, radtech. I may order another, although I do think the red wine stains lend my current hero a distinctive quality.

In hindsight, the saddest part of the whole event is that even though I had thrown an entire (large) glass of red wine all over my kitchen and living room, shattering the glass, destroying a pile of papers, and soaking the white counter, the hardwood floor, and the answering machine, my one and only concern was rescuing that all-important piece of electronic wonder that had unfortunately been sitting directly in the line of fire. In slow motion I saw myself leaping across the room, grabbing it off the counter, sending additional red droplets soaring through the air, and uttering a litany of prayers that this would not be the tragedy I was afraid it could be.

Thankfully, as noted above, the pod was fine. But in order to assess that, I proceeded to spend ten minutes splashing around in the wine in my socks, kicking glass around the room, running between my bedroom and the kitchen sink, and pouring myself more wine to calm my nerves.

When finally certain that the iPod would in fact survive to spin another tune, then and only then could I direct my attention to the task of cleaning up the huge mess now spread all over my apartment. We’re talking red wine everywhere, which had now had a chance to seep into and effectively stain every surface on which it had been permitted to lay, unmolested, for much too long. Good thing I’m moving out!

So I set to scrubbing. And the good news is, I don’t think that apartment has ever been cleaner.