water logged

Ugh... I just put my Sony mini digital voice recorder (ICD-UX523) through the wash!!!!!

I am so exhausted and brain numbed at the end of the day that I forgot it was in the pocket of one of my pairs of cargo pants... I realized after the washer was already full of water.

Right now I've got it in a bowl of uncooked rice. All my tech friends tell me I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing and following protocol.

They say to leave it (at least) over night, but possibly a day or two.

I'll leave it until Wednesday and see what happens.

My main tech buddy (and one of my best friends) said he'd crack it open and see, but that he wasn't holding much hope. 

I also called Sony and the operator said that, since the item was off warranty, that I would only be able to troubleshoot via the website:

https://esupport.sony.com/US/p/model-home.pl?mdl=ICDUX523

I had 21 files on there. Roughly a few hours (more or less) of writing notes.

I am also looking into seeing (if the device really is irredeemable) if the sound files can be extracted without the device working.

All that creativity... potentially gone.

But, if it's gone, it's gone. I can't lament it.

I have to realize that:

a.) This has happened to me before: in 2009 (when I was a traveling tutor) some kid at one of the schools I tutored at stole my Memorex analog mini cassette recorder when I was chaperoning a field trip. 

b.) In 1922, in Switzerland, Hemingway lost a suitcase full of stories when his wife, Hadley, left it unattended at a train station.

http://lostmanuscripts.com/2010/07/31/hemingways-lost-suitcase/

If Hem could recover, so can I.

c.) It serves me right for slacking on my writing and neglecting to (if nothing else) empty the files onto my computer (even if I didn't transcribe them).

At any rate, all I can do now is wait for the rice to do its work.

If it does, I am saved... And I will try to never make this mistake again!!!

If it does not... I learn from my mistake... And my next digital audio recorder will perhaps be so big that it will not fit in my cargo pant pocket, but will only git in my jacket pocket and (therefore) will never go through the wash.