D-A-D-D-Y needs C-O-F-F-E-E

I don't remember my first pop. Or soda, or whatever they call it in your part of the world. I do know that by the beginning of high school it was basically the only form of liquid I consumed. Well, that's not completely true, I did have milk with cereal and I dunked oreos in milk, but if I got something to drink then it was pretty much always a pop. This continued through college where the poverty of student life reduced me to drinking Fago Moon Mist. It's a generic mountain dew, about 2/3 the price, and as I was getting about half my daily calories from drinking it, the savings was significant. As a real grown up I sort of switched to coke, but only because they had free cokes in the fridge when I worked in an office. Free is my favorite flavor. I often wonder what miracle of metabolism and luck enabled me to not become a 400 pound toothless diabetic. 
Over the last few years, I've quit. It's pretty clear that drinking half of my calories as corn syrup probably isn't a good long term strategy. That, coupled with the fact that I didn't want my kids to have pop as their default drink like I did, led me to this decision. So I quit pop, but I can't seem to quit caffeine. I need caffeine to feel normal. I bet that's not a good thing either come to think of it. If not pop, then what? I drank tea for a while, and still do sometimes, but I've settled on coffee. Coffee is what makes the day possible. Coffee is life.
Although I've grown to love coffee, I really don't like making it. Not in a coffee maker anyway. You've got a really cool process of hot water leaching out the glorious caffeine and flavor and what not, and you can't see it. It's usually hidden behind shiny black plastic in modern coffee makers. It's the most scientific thing I do every day, and I feel like I'm missing out on the action. I used a stove top percolator for a while, and I do like it. You can see the bubbles bubble up and get darker as the brewing happens, it's cool. But I have an electric stove so boiling water is an exercise in frustration. I finally settled on using a funnel and a filter. It's a lot like the coffee cones that you can buy, but it's just a funnel. I could spend the $5 to buy a coffee cone, but a coffee cone is a one hit wonder. All you can do is make coffee with it. I can also funnel things with my funnel, so that somehow makes it better. I really wish I had a better way to heat up water though. I don't remotely have the patience to deal with an electric stove in the morning, so I use the microwave. It works, and I love the idea of an alternating electromagnetic field making the water hot, but it's missing romance. I keep thinking of an aparatus that would use a bunson burner and a coil of copper tubing and some flasks and......some other mad scientist stuff. I really want to feel like I'm creating life in a lab first thing in the morning. That would really get things off on the right foot.
If anyone can think of a really elaborate mad scientist way to heat water for coffee, let me know in the comments, I'm in the mood to build something really silly in the kitchen.