Macbook sizzled and turned off after SMALL water spill.. What Now???

[judeplum]

It has been literally months since I spilled a little bit of water directly onto the keypad of my macbook ibook. It immediately started to shut down, sizzled and displayed a black, lifeless screen. I was so worried about it having crashed I -painfully ignorantly - plugged it in to charge because it was running on very low battery and I though it was perhaps a strange coincidence considering how small the amount of water was. Well, of course nothing happened. Horrified and devastated as my like is in this computer and the same thing happened to my Macbook pro 2 years earlier, I took the battery out and put it on a shelf to dry out....
Well now it has been a few months and I'm unsure of what to do. Should I take it to someone before trying to start it in case starting it causes a short or something? I am regrettably less than savvy, as you surely have guessed by now. I don't have a clue what to do and I've already done enough that may have caused severe damage.

 

[Zazoh]

Yep, it is most likely toast. You have to take it in for repairs obviously. If there is nothing wrong then no worries. Seems if you haven't used it for months you don't need it anyway.

I have a question, why do so many people use electronics so close to liquids.

 

[xraydoc]

Now what?

Pull the hard drive and recover what data you can, and head to the store to buy a new laptop.

Sucks, but water + laptop = new laptop.

 

[eman]

With this type of spill, you should have pulled the charger and battery from macbook right away. Then, try to have the spill cleaned from the logic board.
Now, that the macbook has dried out and doesn't start, you may want to think about selling as parts.

 

[FireArse]

What now??

Speak to your insurers - that MLB is game over.

 

[judeplum]

Just to clarify:

I was on a bed and my dog jumped onto the bed while hitting my nightstand and subsequently knocking over an very-nearly-empty glass of water onto my lap/keypad.

I have since been borrowing a friend's old Dell laptop.

I have virtually no computer anatomy knowledge nor "what to do when" knowledge.
I've made an appt. with a university's tech center which is essentially an Apple satellite, so I'm apprehensive though pretty much cynical about it.

I just wanted advice on whether there's anything I can do myself and whether it would be safe concerning my data. Speaking of which, how likely is it that I lose data and if so which data??? I don't have it backed up.

(Thanks in advance for any info, I really do appreciate seeing as how I stupidly have my life contained in this computer without backup)