The mister's Vegas mug

Heidi recently did a post on the coffee mug that is seeing her through NaNoWriMo. It's a Las Vegas mug with her name on it that my folks bought for her on one of their many trips to Vegas. I remember asking them to bring a couple back in 2006 after I had the epic fail of not buying one on my first trip to Vegas in May of 06 to see Madonna (seriously, we just barely made our flight as it was without me hemming and hawing over which mug to buy.) So over the years, they've purchased us several different Las Vegas mugs - my favorite being one that condensed the Las Vegas Strip onto one mug, highlighting the most famous hotels and landmarks on the Strip.

This summer, during our very brief stopover in Vegas, I found one that I liked better.

Here's the thing. When we went on our trip out west this summer, I knew that I was going to buy several mugs. It's kind of my thing - I buy one from just about every place I go. I still miss the mammoth mug of the U.S. Capitol that we bought when we went to D.C. in 2000. (I accidentally dropped it on a cement floor and watched it break. Jesus wept.) But what I knew we did not need were more Vegas mugs so if we were to stop there, I would not be buying one. We already have to cycle mugs out of the cupboard to keep them from overflowing.

However, I saw this and could not pass it up.

As you might expect, I hemmed and hawed over it even though it was fantastically cheap (it was certainly no more than 4 bucks.) What eventually tipped the scales in favor of purchasing it was how fabulously retro it is, down to the red dice and iconic Vegas sign. So many of the mugs in Vegas are trashy and gaudy and gross, this one was kind of cute. It was like the little mug that could.

So I purchased it. And it has slowly found its way into my most favored mugs. It's small which necessitates more frequent trips to the kitchen, but I kind of like its smallness. So many mugs are just monstrous nowadays and it's nice to see ones that don't take half the pot of coffee when you fill them.