A tale of 2 mugs

My friend gave me a gift last February of a Starbucks travel mug with tons of pics of the kids inside. It was one of those mugs that you insert your own photo. She had a template and so she did a great digital scrapbook of pics from my photo site. This was especially meaningful because Lissi wasn't home yet but she used lots of pics that others had sent me from Korea. Then I could show Lissi off at work whenever I had my mug with me.

I didn't know what to get my mom for mother's day, but last week I thought that making her one of these mugs with pics of her grandkids (aka Cal and Lissi) would be fun. So I found a couple of hours during the kids naps and then at bedtime to work on this project. I was pretty happy with my work and I printed it out on photo paper. Then I went to Starbucks to buy the mug. The Starbucks didn't have any so I tried another. Then Wink tried one. Then I tried another. Then I went online and tried Starbucks online and amazon and google searches. Nothing. Apparently, these aren't for sale anymore. I put a "help" call out on my work classifieds. A few people replied that they saw similar mugs at Target or Michael's. But not only do I have no time to go to more stores to look (I mean Mother's Day is coming soon!) but I also didn't like the style of some of them. They were noticeably cheaper quality. And I didn't know if the template and pictures would be the right size for a different mug.

I did, however, find a few new and used of the exact style on ebay. So I bid on a new one and was immediately outbid. I bid on a "slightly used but good condition" one and became the highest bidder. The auction didn't end for a few days. I regretted bidding almost immediately since it was a used mug and with $5 shipping I wasn't saving any money over a new mug. Plus, the auction wouldn't end in time for me to ship the mug to my mom. But I've never won anything on ebay before and I figured I win wouldn't again.

On Monday I got an email from my friend's husband saying he dropped by a Starbucks downtown near his work and looked for the mugs there. They said they would call around and see if anyone still had them. On Tuesday, he was told that there was another Starbucks downtown that still had the mugs. So he walked there and bought the last 2 mugs. He emailed and I told him I'd be over that night to pick them up. That afternoon was the 1st afternoon when Cal and Lissi were being watched by a babysitter (friends from our homegroup at church). I stayed for a while at their house to talk and then brought both kids with me to pick up the mug. Right before we got there Cal goes, "My froggie blanket!". We searched the car and realized that he must have left it at the babysitter's home. I figure there is nothing I can do at the time and so I pick up the mug and pay my friend for it. Then we go back to the babysitters and I ring on the doorbell twice and their neighbor's doorbell only to discover that they went out to dinner! Aack. No froggie blanket, but yes mug.

Tuesday evening, I tell Wink that we got the mug and he is excited. Not only because I had been trying to get it, but also because he left his travel mug on the car hood. It fell off and was run over immediately by another car.

Thursday morning, I get an email saying I've won the auction for the "slightly used" Starbucks mug. Aack. The one I didn't really want. Who'd have thought I'd finally win something??!! So now I'm obligated to buy this mug that I didn't really want, but will be a good replacement for Wink's run-over mug. Then today I spent over half an hour at work trying to get paypal to work for me, but it says that I already have an account. I try every password that I can think of and none of them are working. So I try to reset my password and paypal keeps saying that there is a system error. At this point, I still have not gotten paypal to work for me. I hope that this mug saga ends soon!