Mindy Carlson

I make a cold brew coffee with honey, lavender syrup, and almond milk every morning. And not a small one, either. Large. Very Large.

My coffee–doctored with almond milk, honey, and lavender syrup–sits next to me while I work on the administrative part of being a writer. I sip at it as I reply to emails and work at my social media. It’s a lovely, calm morning routing.

Until last Thursday that is.

Because that’s the day my coffee slipped out of my hand and tsunamied across my laptop.

I immediately tipped it upside down and coffee poured out from between the keys, the speaker holes, and the vents. Doom was upon me. I got on my phone and pulled up Apple support and got an appointment only 45 minutes away.

The tech rushed my laptop to the back room as if it were a person bleeding out. Then in a terribly short amount of time he came back and told me the laptop was actively dying. The coffee was literally everywhere and a shocking amount was pooled by my touch pad. To fix it would be $1600, and that wasn’t guaranteed to work.

We managed to get all my data transferred, truly a miracle, but I now own a new laptop.

And I’m no longer having coffee at my desk.

My friend Diana pointed out that I must have done something to anger the water gods, what with this laptop death, the water heater exploding, and my insta-hot faucet breaking and flooding the cupboard just days before the coffee tsunami. So I’m taking suggestions on how to break my curse!

Also, use DropBox or The Cloud to backup all your data. (Not a sponsor.)

In sunnier news, I was a guest host on Jeff Circle’s The Dossier Podcast this week, helping to interview Jason Powell. Jason’s debut novel NO MAN’S GHOST is coming out this Tuesday, May 27, 2025. Jason is also a NYC firefighter and we get unexpectedly deep into the cooking culture of the firehouse.

Cool Alert! A book vending machine has been installed in the Western Market neighborhood at the Foggy Bottom food hall near the I Street entrance.

It is the brain child of author Lauren Woods and holds 23 books my DC writers. Lauren is my new hero.

This week I’ll be in Berkeley celebrating the retirement of a dear friend of mine. Follow all the fun on my Instagram.