I'm not asking for help. Just trying to reassure others and give some advice on how to deal with it.

I spilled some water on my laptop first thing this morning.

I IMMEDIATELY shut it off and removed the power cord. I should have immediately removed the battery, but didn't. I removed it an hour or so later after I calmed down enough to think.

I wiped up as much water as I could, removed the hard drive, the memory chip cover, the battery, and the DVD. Just to be thorough, I also removed the keyboard.

I wiped every surface to remove as much water as I could.

I then sprayed everything with a can of air. I considered using a hair dryer, but rejected that option as one that could cause more harm than it fixed.

I stuck the drive in an external enclosure and it's good, so even if I shorted the MB, I've got all my data (which is good since I haven't done a backup in a couple of weeks).

With our 5% humidity, it's probably already dry, but I'm going to wait until morning to plug it in and try it out.

I'd be more concerned if I had spilled something like soda or beer, but since it's just water, it probably just needs to dry out.

I think my main point is that if this happens to you, shut everything down as fast as possible. Don't waste time saving files, just shut down. Or better yet, just hold the power switch down until it shuts off. The unsafe shutdown isn't as bad as the potential loss of the laptop.

Then remove parts that are easy to remove and dry things out, but don't do anything that might do more harm than good, like heat it up with a hair dryer or use something that will leave lots of lint behind.

Then give it time. Give it more time than you think it needs.

If you keep your wits, you should still be okay.

Note: If I post tomorrow night that I'm totally screwed, feel free to ignore the advice I just gave.