The Fog Machine...

It's amazing how a janked, homemade fog machine can reveal to me how little common sense I have.

yes I have known this fact for a very long time. And people are often surprised to hear I went to a school like Northwestern. Books and I see eye to eye. But street smarts? Well...I'm workin on it.

Today was my second day to try to master the fog machine. Here are the basic steps:
A) Turn on the heater so that the water can get to a boil
B) Place bag of dry ice in the metal basket
C) Lower the basket through lowering a metal pipe on the top of the machine
D) Turn on the fan so that the fog flows out of a tube onto the stage

Not too difficult right?
Well yesterday, I stuck my hand into the machine to retrieve the bags only to find that instead of a wire basket I was touching boiling water! OWWWW.

So during the scene today, I was contemplating, "Should I stick my hand in the water again? I need more dry ice but I have no bags...What do I do???" And the guy across the stage is motioning to me like, "We need more fog!!" and I'm thinking, "Look buddy I am not sticking my hand into boiling water. No sir." And then at the end of the scene I figured out that lowering the metal pipe lowers the wire basket, so if I want to retrieve the bags for the ice I need to raise the metal pipe! Ohhhhh.

So maybe the next time I'll get it right? Successfully keep fog flowing throughout the whole scene?
Oh the suspense. oh the suspense.