h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm getting a little concerned about the number of stupid things I do these days. Take this morning for instance.

I took my clothes to the laundry room nice and early, put the machine on, laundry liquid in, so far so good. Half an hour later I went back to them in the dryer, but as is my habit I put my shirts to one side and brought them back to the apartment to be ironed, which I duly did, then turned the iron off (it has a slide that goes from off to hot) and left it to cool down.

I went back to laundry later to get the clothes, brought them back and got ready to start folding them on the ironing board. It's about the only flat space I have that isn't either kitchen counter or coffee table covered in stuff.

Before I start winding the flex around the iron to put it away I always put my palm on it to make sure it's cooled down enough to do that without melting the plastic. It always is. Except this morning, because instead of turning it off I'd turned it to full.

Ow.

And that's why for the past half hour I've been holding on to one of the pint glasses of frozen chicken stock I keep in the freezer There's no sign of any burn or blisters because I whipped my hand away from it PDQ, it just stings like Billy Buggery.

Oh bother.

Hence, why, I always feel, 'ironing', along with such things as 'sport', and 'exercise', are just too damn dangerous occupations/passtimes/activities, for one to partake in... Its just asking for an accident, injury or fatality to happen
I have, never ironed anything in my life... something of which I'm kinda proud Well done with the immediatley getting cold stuff on it... hopefully it won't blister at all, or take too long to recover fully

OUCH! Burns suck.

I don't use an iron often, but my mother taught me well. I always lick my finger before testing to see if one is hot.

Leidenfrost effect. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTOCAd2QhGg

I kept waiting for that story to go in the "I discovered I forgot to turn the machine on and my clothes were still dirty/wet" direction...

I have an iron that I use for sewing and crafting, but I honestly can't remember the last time I actually ironed an article of clothing with it.

Oh, I've been there broe, but not because of anything I did or didn't do - the machine was bust

The thing is, when I was a sugar boiler I knew that it's possible to handle something that's hot enough to burn without getting burned or even feeling any pain, if you only touch it very briefly, and every day I used to manipulate thick liquids - high boiled sugar syrup (think really really thick molasses) that were hotter than boiling water with my bare hands. Obviously that only works up to a certain temperature, and the sugar syrup I was handling was below that threshold (the hottest it ever got boiled to was around 300°F, and if it sticks to your hand at that temperature when it's still runny, that's very very bad. I found that out the hard way), but I could still touch or pick items that were hotter than that (and there are a lot of those in a sweet factory) without burning my hand.

Yeah, the leidenfrost effect won't work UNLESS the metal is at much hotter temps than boiling water.

Otherwise, it's like you say. Pass it back and forth like a hot potato or else you'll spill the lentils on the floor like Neil.

Anyway, this all rather misses the point that I turned the iron to full instead of turning it off, and little things like that seem to be happening more often than they used to.