How to make the perfect cup of tea

I'd like to start this post by saying I'm probably going to write three posts tonight but they need to be separated because different/important things happened that necessitate their own space. Soooooo to begin, let me take you back to the night of Monday, the 21st of March.

One of my roommates, Jq, had just arrived back from a trip around Ireland with her cousin and had some crazy sort of lung deal, like whooping cough or something (not really that serious, but it did sound like a lung was going to come flying out of her mouth any minute). So I told her that I was making her a cup of tea. Her response was that she had never had tea before. And I'm like "what?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! I definitely need to make you one now". However, in our apartment we only have black and green tea, neither of which were the appropriate color to sooth her throat. Thankfully, I knew that our good friend and neighbor had been sent sleepy time tea from a friend at home. I figured that for the sake of Jq's lungs, Christine would not be upset with us if we borrowed/took a tea bag.

This is no big deal, we go over to their apartment all the time, mostly for cooking supplies (which actually normally ends in hour long hang out/discussion sessions), so I knock on the door. Dan answers, I enter and retrieve the tea bag, I'm unsure if we have honey (a necessary component in soothing tea) so ask Dan if it's alright if I borrow his. Important tangent: when Dan opened the door he had obviously just been shirtless and was halfway through putting one on...so as I'm leaving, he asks if I'll be bringing the honey back immediately or the next day so he'll know whether to keep the shirt on or not (I swear these details are important), I say I'll return it that night and head back to my room to brew some tea.

I like to imagine this is what it looked like when I make tea.

The water boils, I put the tea bag in the mug, add a generous amount of honey, this girl is about to lose a lung for goodness' sake) and let it sit to cool down a bit. While we wait for this, I decide to bring the honey back to Dan. Jq, for some reason, decides that it's important for her to come too and say thank you. A couple of days before this, we'd figured out a cool trick with our doors where you put out the bolt so that it doesn't close all they way, this makes the running back and forth between rooms a lot easier. So Jq put out the bolt, but apparently not all the way, and the door closed behind her. I did not know this, I'd already entered Dan's apartment and closed his door, so when I opened it to head back to my own, Jq was standing there, looking slightly pathetic and probably coughing. She hadn't brought her card and I hadn't either (though that would've been pointless because it had stopped working earlier that day), neither of us had our cell phones either and our landlady's phone number is at least in mine.

Margaret, our landlady, had previously told us stories (long long long stories) about previous mishaps that have happened at Copley Court, and told use explicitly that she doesn't mind being woken up or interrupted to let us in because it's her job. Soooo, we borrow Christine's phone, but neither her nor Dan have the phone number. So Jq and I have to run down the two flights of stairs in bare feet (it's 23:00) at this point, to get Marge's number. We call and no one answers....decide to call our other roommate who's out at a pub with her visiting boyfriend...no one answers. Meanwhile, Jq's mug of tea is still seeping and cooling in our apartment, the whole reason for this venture in the first place. Call Marge again, she picks up, very upset.
I say, "Hi Margaret, I'm so sorry to bother you, but we've locked ourselves out of our rooms!"
She says, "Are you joking?" in a not very friendly voice.
Me, "No, we forgot our keys"
Her, "Aren't your other roommates around, why would you lock yourself out of your room?" Apparently thinking that I personally had managed to lock myself out of my bedroom. So I had to straighten her out and try to explain the situation, but did not stand firm and said that we would continue to try to reach our third roommate and perhaps she'd come and let us in. Marge says that if we absolutely have to we should call her again and she'd come let us in. So we call Kasey probably ten times, we also spend some time sitting on our neighbors couch, and some time sitting in the hallway trying to study Irish from memory, and some time sitting on the window sill looking at the moon (which was particularly full and close at that point in time). So a good half an hour has passed before we decide to suck it up and call Margaret back again...she is not happy.

When she arrives she looks particularly grumpy, keep in mine it's only like 23:30 at this point, so not too late. But she says she had to take some painkillers for her back and was in bed mucho early. But still lets us in. Finally Jq is able to drink the tea...and it was at the perfect temperature!! She thoroughly enjoyed it and managed not to lose any lungs!

So in sum, to make the perfect cup of tea, there are many steps. Also, I had to visit Margaret the next day to replace my broken card, she wittily told me that next time I leave the room at night, I shouldn't forget my card. Argh...but even if I'd had it, we still wouldn't have been able to get in...oh well. It was quite the exciting experience. Turned out that Kasey had decided not to bring her phone with her because no one called her at night...perfect.

Sorry for the weirdly detailed account...I wanted to at least write it down for me because it was such an epic night!