the pleasures of dry ice
I'm up at Baylor now, doing my yearly deal for them. Every evening after the show, we exit the stage door to find a huge pile of unused dry ice. Yes, folks, these otherwise healthy people just throw dry ice out the back door by the pound, to let it waste away unappreciated.
Tonight we remedied that. Joe and I gathered a sackful, maybe ten pounds, leaving perhaps fifty more behind, and spent the evening doing fun stuff with it. We took one lump to Taco Cabana with us, and within a few moments had completely mesmerized the under-tens. We also, more importantly, had mesmerized ourselves. As someone pointed out, there are certain questions to which the answer is always "Yes." One is, "Would you like to build a trebuchet?" Another is, "Hey, wanna play with dry ice?"
We discovered that as the ice cools the water to insane temperatures, its Macbethian effect is lessened and lessened. So we kept getting water from the coffee thing to freshen it. When we got home (after a spell involving artichoke pizza, Montague Churchills, Hefe Weisen, and a five-hour World Series game), Joe and I boiled several kettles of water and poured it over the lumps, several at a time. It never got old, seeing that stuff swirling and bubbling and creeping along the floor like the material in a Pensieve, a gas impersonating a liquid, occasionally shooting out tiny tight smoke-rings from a creamy fog.
Tonight we remedied that. Joe and I gathered a sackful, maybe ten pounds, leaving perhaps fifty more behind, and spent the evening doing fun stuff with it. We took one lump to Taco Cabana with us, and within a few moments had completely mesmerized the under-tens. We also, more importantly, had mesmerized ourselves. As someone pointed out, there are certain questions to which the answer is always "Yes." One is, "Would you like to build a trebuchet?" Another is, "Hey, wanna play with dry ice?"
We discovered that as the ice cools the water to insane temperatures, its Macbethian effect is lessened and lessened. So we kept getting water from the coffee thing to freshen it. When we got home (after a spell involving artichoke pizza, Montague Churchills, Hefe Weisen, and a five-hour World Series game), Joe and I boiled several kettles of water and poured it over the lumps, several at a time. It never got old, seeing that stuff swirling and bubbling and creeping along the floor like the material in a Pensieve, a gas impersonating a liquid, occasionally shooting out tiny tight smoke-rings from a creamy fog.
Comments