Casey set his Beef with Broccoli down. That really did hit the spot. Just the thing for a late night session at the office. The three of them had agreed not to talk business while eating. They believed that giving your mouth a rest every once in a while let your brain do better work.

He’d never met these employees before. Both were relatively new, Bill having been hired about six months ago and Stacy about nine. They were the only ones available when he called. He felt a little guilty about keeping them after regular hours but they both assured him that it wasn’t a problem. They were probably just trying to be agreeable for the boss but he couldn’t help that.

Will had loved his idea. He’d just been to Paris and was particularly impressed with the tomb of Napoleon at a place called Les Invalides. They’d found pictures of it on the internet and the gleaming golden dome was quite striking. A bit ornate for what he had in mind.

This brought about discussion of Notre Dame and their own ‘Golden Dome’. He and Will had discussed the way the Wolverines had beaten the Irish last year. Stacy looked a little bored but she handled it well.

Both of them loved the idea of a central glass dome. Stacy thought she knew a firm that could help design and build it for them. She made some notes and promised to make calls the next day. It felt like the ball was rolling. Now that they had some idea, all of them were confident that they could build off of that.

Stacy had noted that they needed something that would withstand the cold and snow of winter. This brought Casey up short as he had only pictured green lawns and sunny skies. Of course it wouldn’t always be like that. The area was known for it’s weather. Chilling cold and amazing snowstorms were the norm for a large part of the year.

Could they do something with that? Was there any way to turn the weather to their advantage? Will got a faraway look in his eye. He told them that he had an idea but it wasn’t fleshed out enough yet. He’d chew on it over dinner and see if he had anything good to share.

Judith hadn’t called back yet. She might be out on the town. Well, he was having dinner so he couldn’t really grudge her the same thing. Still, he really wanted to share this with her. The creative part of the project had been put under her control and he felt a little bad about stealing it back. The cold and analytical manager part of him thought that it was only fair since she’d taken so long to come up with a good design.

He also wanted to share the joy of creation with her. She might be a little miffed but she’d also be happy for him, her husband. Casey turned the thought over in his head and decided that he was lying to himself. She’d be plenty proud later on but that wouldn’t be her initial reaction.

She had to know, there was no getting around that. What would happen if she had an incredible idea that night and returned only to find that he’d made his decision and was going ahead anyway. That would be monstrously unfair.

Will set down his dish and looked like he wanted to talk. “Ok, so we have to take this winter thing and meet it head on, ok? It’s going to be cold and snowy and that should make us feel bad but we’re going to turn it around. Here’s the idea, every time we get a big snowfall I want people to rush right up there so they can see what’s happened. We need to design something that will use the snow to make something incredible!”

“What do you mean?”

“There should be some kind of, I don’t know, structure, ok? And that will take the snow and make incredible formations, right. Except every time they’ll be a little bit different. Unique somehow. That will bring people in!”

They agreed that it was a good idea but they didn’t really know how it would be accomplished. Casey had a vision of some cheap looking machines or an army of ice sculptors. That didn’t really have the dignity that he wanted. It was too good of an idea to completely discard though.

Stacy spoke up, “I know, icicles! That’s what we’ll use!”.

“What do you mean?”

“I see some kind of courtyard. Every time it snows we have this built so that enormous and amazing icicles are created. Just thinking of them hanging all over the place!”

“So we’ll have lots of eaves for them to drip off of?”

“No, more than that. Picture…an open space. With sidewalks at regular intervals. Now in the yard between the sidewalks are these gigantic icicles, just hanging there twinkling in the sun. Do icicles twinkle?”

“Don’t worry about it, we’ll find a way to make them do it.”

“Maybe we can make them take different shapes, too. Is there any way to do that?”

“We can play around with it and find out.”

“And at night we can have different colored lights playing inside of there. Just think of how magical that would look!”