I have a small white box in my house that is labeled as a “microwave” but is known to my family as a “magic tea machine”. The reason for the re-labeling is that in the winter months it is quite common to open the door to this magic box and find a mug of tea, usually quite cold. There are some theories that this box is tied to that alternate universe where socks go from the dryer and the cold mug of tea is some sort of free trade exchange for this far flung hosiery. A more likely excuse is that two minutes and 15 seconds (the time that it takes to heat tap water to the temperature for tea) is longer than my attention span.
This is my life. I own a tea kettle and like the taste of tea when made correctly in a kettle. But the time that it takes to make tea in a kettle and let it steep under a tea cozy does not fit into my hectic lifestyle. Apparently neither does the two and one quarter minutes that it takes to make the tea in the microwave. And so sometime in the middle of the tea heating up I start thinking I can make better use of the time and I am distracted by something shiny. Sometimes I hear the microwave timer go off but have become involved in some other task. I think, I will go and get that in a minute. And so my hot cup of tea cools in the magic tea machine.
Sometimes this process gets repeated. I think “hey I could use a hot cup of tea” and open the magic tea machine to find the very thing there (usually cold by now). This is the “magic” part of the magic tea machine. If the tea is cold, that is not a problem. I can easily reheat it. It only takes two minutes and fifteen seconds.