I poured out a small amount of my “Bill’s Drink” into one of my glass beer mugs. I’ve had these over 30 years They belonged to Russ & Deborah, and they had donated them to the “Hem of His Garment” when I was working there, and I bought all six of them. I was living, working and going to school (Coastal Carolina Community College) in Jacksonville, North Carolina at the time. When I moved to Fayetteville, North Carolina in 1995, I brought these beer mugs with me. They were a nice size for drinks with ice.
So, just about an hour ago, I had used these beer mugs without breaking any of them in over 30 years. *I just checked and I still have five left.
I wanted to wash one of my drink carafes which had a small amount of “Bill’s Drink” in it. I poured the remaining drink into one of my beer mugs and put it in the microwave for 2 minutes. I like my drink hot or cold, and almost every day for more than six months.
So, I was doing something. I might have been pre-treating a few of my T-Shirts with the stains that haven’t come out after a good washing. I think some of the stains are from spilled Hot Chili Crisp, which is a reddish oily stain. I pre-treated with Dawn dishwashing liquid, and a little water, but I didn’t see much of those stains being loosened, or disappearing. But, all of a sudden I hear a loud crash. It sounded like something had fallen off a nearby shelf. I even walked out of the kitchen and into my living room looking for what might have fallen, but didn’t see anything.
I came back into the kitchen and heard my microwave talking to me, so I went to open the microwave door. It was then that I saw something that surprised me. The glass beer mug had exploded in the microwave and except for one large ring of glass, the rim of the glass mug, there were a bunch of large shards of glass and the small amount of Bill’s Drink.
The drink was room temperature. No ice. And, I’ve heated water for hot tea in these glass mugs for years. In fact, I will even use the glass mug to heat the water and then transfer the hot water into a fancier coffee/tea mug. Not sure why this happened, but it is an exceptionally rare occurrence, “never” rare. *I’ve re-thought this and I think it may have been that I had so little liquid in this mug that it allowed the existing liquid to get much hotter, thereby breaking the glass mug. I have heated many, many, many of these mugs, with either water, or Bill’s Drink in them from 3 minutes to a couple of minutes and none have ever broken until now. I even heated water in one of the remaining mugs for 3 minutes this morning to make my Raspberry Royale tea and it worked just fine. **I will just have to pay attention and fill these mugs higher.
*I seem to recall breaking two other glasses when I had put either ice, or extremely cold liquid in them and then the heat from the microwave cracked them, but this wasn’t the case. Maybe the small amount of liquid concentrated the heat on the glass.
This may be the perfect spot to show my current coffee/tea cups/mugs. I’ve been thinking about getting rid of all but about three of them, but don’t quite know which three to keep. I did have a favorite, large, blue glass mug that cracked, and I didn’t replace it because of how expensive a replacement would be.
Bill Gibson, II 