We love our tiny, shiny Apple Keyboards (aside from the ridiculous USB placement/depth). We also love eating lunch at our desks. Today happened to be one of those days where lunch somehow ended up on my glorious keyboard. It could have been worse (soup). It could have been better (soft dinner rolls). But it was a bagel with cream cheese. Face down.

It wasn’t pretty, and rather than taking photos of the incident (depressing and poorly lit) I’ll walk you through how to remove a slightly messy substance from a slightly ridiculous keyboard.

Oh snap, you got cream cheese on your keyboard. The first method (wiping with papertowel, wedging paper towel in gaps) proved useless as the keys are so sensitive that touching them depressed them, thus spreading cream cheese further down the already-tiny crack.

I had never encountered this problem with Apple’s absurdly thin keys. So I looked around my desk for something better. A harder/stiffer material. Something thin enough to get underneath the key (because removing the Apple keys puts you at a 77%* chance of breaking the key, or never getting it back on). My successful find: a former employee’s business card.

The above card has been changed (to our latest version) to protect the identity of the not-so-recently departed. But I’m sure any business card would do.

I wish I could say it was trickier than that, but really you just have to dig down in there with your business card, alternating corners to get the most use out of your card (which will also prevent further spreading of material).

It might take a few minutes, and it would be advised to use some sort of sanitation product after. It is important to note that I unplugged my keyboard during this process. I wasn’t looking to accidentally send an email to a client that looked like “jm,j,kj,k,mkjm,m,jk“.

Repeat until clean.  Look at it shine! Back to normal, almost.

These illustrations were done in Illustrator while finishing the slippery bagel (cheddar) from Collegetown/Downtown Bagels which was: delicious

* Totally made up

We love coffee.  It drives us.  It keeps us going through those long, grey days and those too-bright early mornings.  We also love Gimme! Coffee, our local roaster and snooty-delicious provider of the bean.

One of the many perks that comes with working here at AWP is free coffee.  And not just any coffee, we get free Gimme.

That is until we decided to experiment and try out another, Ithaca-based coffee roaster.  You know, for fun.

Well, we paid for that.  Our alternate, unnamed roaster’s coffee tasted like sweet dirt.  Or acid.  We couldn’t decide.  Maybe if a hobo decided to eat sun-baked dirt all day, and then we made him throw up after drinking too many shots of Green Apple Puckers, the resulting hot stew would be akin to what we had just purchased 10 pounds of.

Dammit.

Well, after courageously drinking as much of that swill as possible (with lots and lots of cream), we finally hit the new month, and could go back to our regular provider of coffee: our sweet, sweet Gimme.  Forgive us baby, please.  We didn’t know.

It all serves to illustrate an important point: never try anything new.

1. Milk from Evans’: this stuff is unreal. Especially the non-homogenized stuff.
2. Pika’s Quiche is excellent- buttery crust and lots of nice flavor in the egg-part. The goat cheese spinach is my fave. Great for a quick, no-fuss meal. One is enough for 2 servings.
3. Butter from Evans’: this stuff is so good that it just got some attention from the New York Times. I tried it in some cookies I made. Those cookies never tasted better!
4. Chocolate chip cookies from Blue Wave Pastry rock my world. Is it bad if I eat 5 cookies in one day? Probably. These are a staple of my weekly orders.
5. Yogurt from Evans’ is amazing. If you’ve never had cream-on-top yogurt before, now’s the time to try it. It’s the real deal.
6. Chèvre from Lively Run is spectacular. It’s great on pasta or pizza.
7. Raviolis from Raffetto’s in NYC are delicious. Quick, easy meal of homemade pasta. Gorgonzola walnut are great but very rich. Cheese are excellent.
8. Ice cream from Cayuga Lake Creamery is super creamy and homemade tasting. We loved it.
9. Fresh pastas from Little Ithaca are a little pricey but delicious. Cheaper than eating out and more authentic than any other pasta in town.
10. Tofu and tofu kan: can’t go wrong with these and they’re on sale!