Wait, spreading it cold? That sounds like a terrible idea. The paste is meant to be soft and easy to spread from the heat of the CPU when you first turn it on. Doing it cold seems like it would just create air pockets. Scott.william's X pattern idea is way more reliable in my book. You just put a line across the middle in both directions and let the cooler pressure do the work. Spreading it yourself, especially cold, is just asking for trouble and bad temps.

The gauge was reading "oh no" right before it let go. A bad seal would be a polite trickle, not a geyser that soaked my neighbor's cat.

Well, @emmam86 has a point about chilling out, but my phone battery was at 3% so that plan was dead on arrival. Honestly, the worst part is picking the wrong line and then watching the person in front of you dig for exact change in a coin purse the size of a small planet. You can study cashier speed all you want, but you can't plan for that. It's like a weird grocery store lottery you never win.