Note to self: good sandals are hard to find; stop using them to beat people

My beloved black sandals gave out this week, after over a year and a half of faithful service. I bought them a month before I left for Europe, and they tramped all over Germany, through Rome and Paris and a few other places besides. They were both dressy and casual, and I could wear them all damn day and not get achy feet. They looked like grown-up flip-flops, but they had a back-strap that kept me from throwing one of them every fifteen or twenty steps as I tend to do in conventional flip-flops. I walk like a retarded ostrich in normal flip-flops.

But the back-strap was stretched and sagging and irritating, so I performed a strapectomy and now the shoes are essentially dead because I walk right on out of them. Plus, the leather footbed is cracked and pinchy, and the bottoms are wearing smooth, which makes them the Sandals of Death on rainy days when I have to walk on the marble in front of the library on campus. That stuff gets slicker than snot on a doorknob, as M4 would say. Anyway, I'll keep the sandals around for purposes such as taking out the trash and walking in the kitchen when I break a glass, as I often do. (The last one somehow fell out of the cabinet as I was putting it away. It hit my hand, and my usually-not-so-stellar reflexes whipped it violently into the wall over my sink, where it promptly shattered all over the floor, counter, and me. Lost a glass, but my sketchy neighbor is scared of me now, so that's all to the good.) But the sandals are essentially gone, and now I need replacement footwear.

I've been looking online for new sandals today, and really, the process is just too depressing. First of all, what is with online shoe retailers giving vague, unhelpful descriptions of shoes? Teva and Rockport are particularly bad about this: "Sun and Moon"? "Travel 2000"? How the hell am I supposed to know what kind of shoes those titles describe? I have to go click on all the links and find out. I'm too impatient for that. Also, I found out that I'm ridiculously picky. Basically I'm looking for something that's just like my old sandals (which, of course, are no longer being made): black, sorta strappy but not flimsy, fairly solid without being clunky, flat (but not too flat) sole, comfortable, and reasonably priced. It's like asking for Chateau d'Yquem Premier Grand Cru 1857 ($7,500 a bottle, if you were wondering) served in the Holy Grail on Amelia Earhart's flight to the city of Atlantis. Not going to happen. Ever.