Chilling out with the snow melt

 "The happiness of those who want to be popular depends on others; the happiness of those who seek pleasure fluctuates with moods outside their control; but the happiness of the wise grows out of their own free acts." - Marcus Aurelius

 We have a 2" thick sheet of compacted snow on the driveway right now - also known as ice.  Everyone does.  It's freeze-bonded to the concrete skirt into the garage and to the frozen gravel underneath.  And it's quite dangerous to walk on, due to the slope of the terrain.  I had it in mind to put down some ice melt, to try and regain some tire traction while entering the garage.  It's not even possible to walk out to the mailbox at the road.  

There are a few different types of ice melt.  Nearly all of the ice melt products absorb humidity from the air, and the unused part will become a block of wet mush after a short time.  The term for this is our word of the day:  Hygroscopic.  At work, we use an ice melt product that never clumps up - it stays dry and is less toxic to critters than the competitors.  It's quite expensive, as I learned when I ordered a box.

I'm posting an image of the vendor seal on *my* box of ice melt, just in case someone at work stumbles across this and decides to accuse me of stealing.  One time they accused me of stealing coffee, of all things.  Fuck off with your accusations - I can afford my own shit.  I also have an Amazon order number, so pound sand, Chrystel.

Anyhow, as I said, this is non-clumping, because it doesn't absorb water - unlike nearly all of the other stuff.  If I recall correctly, it's an acetate instead of a mag chloride or calcium chloride base.  I bought a fertilizer spreader - similar to the one we use at work - actually it's quite a bit better than that one. 

You can tell that I used it to spread some of the cheap ice melt, because even after a year, it still has liquid goo residue from that ice melt - which absorbed moisture - in it.

Cleaned up and ready for some of the good stuff!

Now for the bad news:  This stuff is so expensive - I paid about $50 for that 50lb box, delivered - that I'm reluctant to spread it as heavy as it needs to be.  So I spread it around thin, and didn't get much good out of it :(.  At work we just use it as needed, but on my own dime, maybe I ought to just use an entire bag of the $10 stuff when there is this much ice to deal with.

There's a reason it comes in an air-tight bag, because once you open it, it begins turning to soup!  On the bright side, you can dissolve it in water and dump it on the ice.