My coffee journey started early in life with my Dad, who became my Dad in 1983 after my real father passed away. As a child one of my chores was to make the coffee every morning and take him a cup after it finished brewing. These were special times with my Dad as we would share a cup of coffee every morning from the time I was four until I was 18 and went off to college.

My Dad drank is coffee straight black and at first mine was mostly milk and sugar with a splash of coffee in a spill proof cup, to when I was high school when my coffee was milk, a lot of sugar and a little more coffee that I drank out of a plastic Taco Bell cup.

My Dad bought me this thermos (image on right) when it was first released by Starbucks in 2006. I had just redeployed from Iraq a few months earlier and was complaining about not having good coffee over there. He told me every good Soldier needed a thermos to take with them to the field. Then gave me a long drawn out lecture asking why I didn’t already know this. If you knew my Dad, this made perfect sense.

We set out to find me the perfect thermos. Now his definition of perfect was a bulky metallic thermos, the one seen on most construction sites for past 100 years but that's not my style.

As you can see from the picture, the thermos is small compared to most and not only was the Starbucks label not to his liking but being bright pink was almost unbearable for him. Like every good dad, he bought it because it was what I wanted, his little girl.

Since my dads passing in 2008, this thermos has deployed overseas with me five times, 3 of those being combat zones. I took it with me to every field exercise, every staff duty, every move, everything.

Sadly this past June (2020) I went camping and found it finally started to leak from all the travel and usage. The seal is cracked and yes, I cried like a baby. My favorite “cup” was broken.