Or…. Brother Knows Best.
It was not one of my finer moments. Erik (my younger brother and also the Otion store manager) cautioned me that my lip balm project wouldn’t work. However, since he did so in front of my mentee Linda, I did not listen to him (to better maintain my Alpha role, of course). Had I listened, I would have heard him saying that the glass I wanted to melt our from-scratch lip balm in wasn’t strong enough to take the sustained heat required to melt the beeswax.
Alas, ego and hubris always go before fall. After six minutes in the microwave, there was a “ding!” to signal the batch done and then an impressive BOOM! (which turned out to be an exaggerated portent of doom).
Opening the microwave found this scene:
The glass, the oils and the wax were all over the microwave; my brother’s taunting laughter filled the air. It was humorous (yet also mildly embarrassing). On a serious note, both Linda and I are lucky that we had not opened the door to the microwave prior to the big BOOM! We could still be picking out glass from our gentle faces.
After using most of the paper towel roll, we managed to sop up the oil, waxes and glass. The microwave still hasn’t recovered fully. Strangely enough, Linda wasn’t all that enthused about trying another batch.
Gee, I wonder why?