Project "Cold, Hard Cash"

I went into this task with two other people (Jen and WysDubs, my partners in crime), and a brain storming session of escalating ridiculousness led to the concept of an ice wallet. Both soon dropped out, having a low tolerance for inconvenience, but I persisted with the crazy idea

Well, an ice wallet would obviously melt, but I wasn't going to let that stop me! I took everything out of my wallet, inserted everything that could fit (keys, money, what have your) into the blocks of an ice try and slid it into the freezer. Not being satisfied, I also decided to freeze my cards. I used a big flat tray, put some water in it, froze the water, put the cards in and added some water on top. This did not work on the first attempt. Or the second. When it finally DID work, I tried to cut the ice sheet apart with a knife. This did not work the first time. Or the second. Finally I realized that I could turn the hot water on a trickle and melt a cut, but by this point I was well into the second day. This was proving to be a more difficult task than expected... and I hadn't even started the 3 day countdown yet! The blocks of money were perfect however, as were my keys. Unfortunately, all pictures came out horrible. I don't think my crappy camera approves of even the notion of ice. Ah well.

So I threw them in a mini-cooler (more of a lunch box actually), stood back, and admired my work. Something was missing. A light bulb flashed above my head and I threw in an apple and some fudge pops. If I was going to be lugging around a frozen wallet all day, I might as well get something out of it. I'm making a not here: Huge Success. It's hard to overstate my satisfaction. Even if the apple did freeze, it was delicious.

So I lugged it around for a couple days, dutifully returning it to the freezer every night in an attempt to repair some of the damage to the melting ice and to refreeze my change. Here were a couple highlights:

Gas station people do NOT approve of even slightly frozen/soggy money. In fact, while trying to get gas during the bus stop conversion task, we were almost stranded thanks to this fact. Luckily they've got nothing against a couple dozen really cold quarters.

I brought my wallet to the live Rocky Horror show on Friday night. While the announcer was making his opening speeches, the donation people went around collecting money. A short while later he was interrupted by one of the donation collectors announcing "Hold on a minute! We have a dollar bill ENCASED IN A BLOCK OF ICE!" Interrupted (only one of many times that night), the announcer replied "Well, I guess that's what they call paying with cold hard cash."
Those seated around me thoroughly enjoyed the fudgicles, and I ate my apple during the dinner scene since I had no desire for a slice of raw canned ham. This was quickly proving to be the best anti-wallet ever.

Other than that, I really didn't get any comments and business went by as usual. Inconvenient, made my not want to spend money, blah blah blah, but most importantly gave me the ability to carry frozen fudge on a stick. And that was worth any price.