Tahini, Honey and Laptops Don't Mix
Giv'atayim, Israel and the Palestinian Territories

A big round of applause should go out to my infant son, who this evening discovered one of the most devastatingly terrible substances that could ever be introduced to an electronic device.

Tonight I stepped away from my open laptop for just moments to go check out a Web site with a Tel Aviv bus schedule my that CouchSurfing host called me over see (leaving Aidric in the living room, just a few steps away with our hostess). She joined us just a couple of seconds later, helping to decipher the site, and as we focused on the poor usability of the pages.

Suddenly, my parenting "spider-sense" went off—the mental image of my 15-month-old, my laptop and foodstuffs on the table, and not enough noise coming from his direction all flashed in my head. …A quite Aidric usually only means one thing: He's doing something he shouldn't be doing, and keeping the volume low as to not draw our attention.

I turned around and bolted into the room to find my son grasping a large tablespoon by the handle, drizzling a viscous mixture of tahini and honey onto the keyboard of my laptop!

Shock. Horror. Anguish.

For those that don't know, tahini is basically a sesame paste that's a common condiment in Arab and Israeli restaurants/households as a side dish or as a garnish. In Israel it can be added to a serving of hummus to give it some variety.

In the photo above you can see my laptop as I'm attempting to clean up the disaster. You can see the keys that I've had to disassemble from the keyboard (to painstakingly clean), as well as a small container of hummus (this isn't the misery that I found oozing into the innards of my computer, but all that's left of the foodstuffs that was on the table).

The aftermath of this terror is still playing out, but after hours of work I can still only get my escape, F1 and F2 keys to work about 15% of the time they're pressed.

Oh, how I love my son.

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