Mugging.

Katie and I are percolating coffee most mornings, so I am pulling out the few mugs I have.  You wouldn't guess it, for tasteless poor people, but we have strict esthetic standards when it comes to mugs.  We won't even put pencils in a mug that we don't adore and that has some vibrant personal history.

Plus I have a mental illness that exhibits the symptoms of overfilling coffee cups:

  That's a cup bought at Saloman Ruin near Farmington about 30 years ago.  Or Mesa Verde maybe, but I really think Saloman.  Was just by there in August with the Jackon.

  Here's the stack.  Still got all four though I had to glue one back together.

  I was your normal idiot batchelor and furnishing my house. I've gotten the 30 years use out of them.  Still favorites.  The back one is resting on one of two Lufthansa mugs that my dad brought back from a trip to Europe in the 60s.  Holy smokes!

  Cup looked so good I thought I would have a second cup out of the other pattern.  You break it: You glue it.

  Next week we are going to Canyon de Chelly, Arizona so I am getting my pre-columbian face on.

  FireKings!  If you don't have a restaurant-grade Oven Ware FireKing in your cupboard....what kind of American ARE you....really?

  One of these is an Ebay and the other a garage sale rescue.  They are precious in God's sight.

 When I was a kid we had a Frankhoma sugar bowl.  I looked for decades trying to find one for my house at estate sales, junk shops, et.  One day I thought about looking on Ebay where they turned out to be numerous and cheap.  Amazing.  The internet was invented so you can find all the old stuff you had when you were a kid: K22 pistols, Tiltall Tripods and Frankhoma sugar bowls.  Got the mug while I was at it.  In fact, I got a couple.

  That's a vintage plastic clothes pin next to it.  What do YOU use as chip clips?  Something un-esthetic?  Please.

  Lufthansas sitting in cabinet corner.  There were four.  Dad used them for years. ( I remember them on pre-dawn mornings in the hill country getting ready to go to the deerblinds.)   Used them since last century.  Nobody ever notices, but I think about dad fondly every time I fill one up.  Nearly worn the logo off.

  This rarely gets used but I keep it around.  Bought it years ago in California when I thought I might make my life there.  Yosemite.  You see folks on the old Sierra Club hikes with the wire handle under their belt.  I never did that.  It rattled around in the pack on several rock climbing and photographic trips but I never really used it much.  More an artifact than anything else.  Still, I hate to part with it.  Made some spectacular trips.  Pre-dates bottled water!

  I'm the NRA and I keep my tools and CMP pens in a cup bought the first year I went to Camp Perry.  Rick Crawford and I actually stopped his truck on the range road and I ran in to buy this while we were loaded up and leaving.