When you say Simple IPA are you talking steeping grains, hop schedules, flavors?
What types of beer do you like to drink? Some people like spicy IPA's, others prefer floral/fruity ones. For example, when I was at ACBF last week Lawson's had an all Chinook IPA (Chinooker'd) and a Citra dominant IPA (Double Sunshine). Both were great, but both were different.
A great recipe is the All Amarillo IPA found here on the forum 1.060ish, 45ibus--yes its barely an IPA, but its light and simple. You can take the recipe and then tweak it to what you can get or prefer. Can't get Amarillo, use Chinook or Columbus for bittering. Try Centennial or Simcoe in later additions. Feeling adventurous...dry hop with Mosaic. To me this is a simple IPA that can be adjusted to what you want.
One of the best beers I ever made was very similar to the All Amarillo Recipe--except I used Chinook for bittering, Cascade + Chinook late, and dry hopped with cascade.
If your LHBS doesn't have Citra, try Galaxy (its a shot, my LBHS has a ton of Citra, but some Southern Hemisphere varieties are really hard to come by).
Another thing that you may want to consider while tweaking recipes is doing 2.5 gallon batches. You can easily do a full boil in pretty much any pot, scale down any 5.5-6 gallon recipe. You can make 2 beers for roughly the same price as a 5 gallon batch--try different combinations and techniques.
BTW--$100 for a single batch....my wife would kill me.
