I acquired my black Macbook late in the spring and was doing a lot of traveling until mid-July. Since then, I’ve been at home working on my laptop all day and all night. I purchase laptops because they’re LAPtops (regardless of Apple’s avoidance of that term) – I need the machine in my lap so that my hands can be at the right angle to prevent my carpal tunnel from flaring up. This is why I haven’t owned a desktop in almost a decade. (Managing my CTS is a longer story, but laptops are the only thing that I’ve found to work.)

Much to my horror, a burn started emerging on my lap this summer. It’s just like the woman who reported this last year. It’s kinda creepy actually. The burn is all blotchy and it shows where my laptop clearly sits. I didn’t feel it happening, but it’s noticeably there and very much in the shape of my Mac. (And it makes it clear that I angle my Mac funny on my lap.) In fact, when it first started to appear, I ignored it because I thought maybe I had done a bad job with the suntan lotion on my thighs. But it got worse and then it dawned on me. I had heard about this problem, but I thought they had fixed it with some firmware upgrade. But it is distinctly the shape and size of my Mac. And it most definitely happened this summer and I have done all of the upgrades requested.

The eerie part is that it’s not going away. I went to Burning Man (which meant 5 days without the laptop) and when I returned, I found a wooden lap-seat to place the machine on, but it still hasn’t gone away. (In the meantime, the burn I got from getting seared by the Temple embers has gone away, as has the slight sunburn.) I’m starting to get a wee bit creeped out. What kind of burn is this? Did my laptop cause more damage than I thought? Are people who aren’t seeing the burn still being affected by whatever is causing it? I never thought that my Macbook was that hot – it was always comfortable in my lap with my yoga pants on. The burn happened without me noticing pain. And there’s no dreadful sound or anything. Just a creeping blotchy ugly burn that doesn’t show any signs of going away.

(Photos not getting posted cuz my thighs are *not* my sexiest feature.)