RIP, my oscar wilde travel coffee mug from barnes and noble circa 2001

this morning i went out to the garage to retrieve my favorite travel mug from the jeep, walked into the kitchen to rinse it and dropped it on the tile floor.

it died.

i was all, "oooooh noooooes!"  i'd had this one since college.  it was a slim, tall, all-plastic travel mug from barnes and noble with pictures of oscar wilde.  i ran into the bathroom where jake was in the shower and wailed, "jaaaaaaaake i broke my mug!!!!!!!!! loooooooook!"  he was like, "um, okay, we have like ten more.  let me get out of the shower first."

i bought this one after i exploded its metal, insulated predecessor in the microwave one humid spring morning in 2001.  i had taken it to my 8:30am photography studio, and then come back to my apartment to sleep until my 11:00am lit class.  i woke up, groggy, and stuck the metal mug into the microwave to reheat the coffee, hit "2 minutes" and walked back to the bedroom to get dressed.

oopsy.

no more mug.  and no more microwave for that matter.

so i sought out to replace my zapped mug with a safer, plastic, melissa-proof mug.  it was a lot cheaper than the new microwave, which my mom refused to help me replace due to my own stupidity in ruining the first one.  my new mug didn't have an unwieldy handle, and it was slim enough that it fit my hand perfectly.  the lid was smooth and at the perfect angle, and the coffee flowed at the perfect rate.  i never burned myself, rarely spilled.  

it stuck with me for seven years.  and then this morning, i kilt it.

why are good coffee mugs so hard to find?  the simplest designs are the best.  i don't want to mess with lids that have open and closing mechanisms -- the get stuck, they break, they're hard to clean.  i hate lids that have big, thick lips to prevent spills - they're too hard to drink from.  the more spill-proof a travel mug purports to be, the less enjoyable it is to drink from.  i am ANTI bells and whistles.  why doesn't the travel mug industry understand this?

is there a travel mug industry?

as i'm writing this post, i'm doing a google image search, and i can't even find a picture of a travel mug i like.  am i that picky?

goodbye, friend.  my lips and my delicious coffee will miss you.