You know how, in Super Mario Bros. level 1-1, when you grabbed the star — and Mario began blinking wildly — the music jumps into that doubletime melody — and you know by instinct that your time in this invincible mode is very limited — sprinting wildly toward the finish, holding down B, running headlong into Goombas, all caution thrown to the wind?
My life is kind of like that lately, except without the invincibility part. Nevertheless, I care about You The Reader so much that I’m sacrificing Regain Sanity Via Super Mario Galaxy Time to write you a lovely post.
However! This post is about Drink, not Food or Video Games! So let’s get going. Today I’m going to craft a loving ode to the item I was staring at in boredom for an hour this morning while waiting in line to get my emissions checked (I mean my CAR’S emissions! Ha HAAAaaaaa.)
My coffee mug! But not just ANY coffee mug — the Greatest Coffee Mug Ever Made, now celebrating its 9th(ish) birthday!
A simple, unassuming coffee mug, you say? Nonsense. This mug doesn’t drip, doesn’t leak, and doesn’t spill. It has (had) a spring-loaded handle clip. It’s double-walled aluminum (or something fancy-sounding) and has been known to keep coffee warm through to the after-lunch lethargy hit.
My good friend’s mother gave me this mug when I went off to college, back in the tender, hopeful summer of Two Thousand and One. I didn’t even drink coffee at the time. Calculus class fixed that, all right. My good friend Shua and I would brew up pots of Starbucks Breakfast Blend with a few shakes of Pumpkin Pie Spice on top to curb the blandness (pro tip! Try it sometime!)
Nine years later, it’s somewhat worse for wear, but still successfully containing my coffee. I scrub it out about once every couple of years (more often these days, what with Shannon finding that extremely gross and all).
Let’s examine the core qualities of this magnificent mug (which just happen to also be core qualities of Yours Truly):
Impressive Longevity
I may only be a quarter of a century old, but if my genetics are any indication, I won’t be old and grey ‘til sometime in my 50’s (my father is right around there, and looks about the same as he did 20 years ago). (Hey, Dad!) Similarly, this here mug has only aged in one perceptible way: the slowly thinning rubber seal. I now have to rotate it about 45º past the optimum 90º handle-to-sipping-hole drinking angle.
So that averages out to about 4º of inconvenient rotation per year. The way I figure it’ll be sometime in 2015 before I really have to do some serious wrist contortions to get a sip. Longevity, man!
Structural Invincibility
What you’re seeing here is evidence of the only time my mug was damaged by a drop onto concrete. I guess it just hit at the wrong angle — but the damage is purely cosmetic. The mug’s internal structure is completely unharmed — much like my own internal structure, as I have never broken a bone.
Also, much like my mug, I spend most of my time full of coffee while sitting around in relatively low-risk situations (heading to work, leaving work, working, sitting on a couch writing a rambling blog, etc) — but still, I just might be invincible, as I have yet to encounter evidence otherwise.
A Tantalizing Air Of Mystery
I have no idea what the make or model of this mug is. What you’re looking at are the bare remnants of the mug’s original lettering: it once said “Starbucks”. The mug’s bottom says it’s “Barista” brand, which doesn’t help me at all with researching how to get a new one (should I ever need such a thing).
This mug is awesome enough to garner cheap imitations — there’s a similar model I’ve seen with white trim instead of yellow, and a crappy plastic stopper that leaks — but I’ve only come across one other identical model, owned by one of my coworkers (who is equally fanatic about his). He claims that they’re sold in the Caribou Coffee in Atlanta, but I haven’t seen it with my own eyes so I can’t confirm.
Much like this mug, I have an Air Of Mystery about me. I’d elucidate but that’d be counter to the whole Mystery Thing. Plus, Craig Ferguson just said “scrotum” in his monologue, which means it’s past my bedtime.
Soon: Mass Effect 2 preview! How to brew the best cup of coffee ever! Tripe tacos (maybe)! I’ve got a heck of a list, man!