Where are the Muffin Stumps?

The other night, I was enjoying coffee with a friend at Panera when I noticed she was eating something that looked like cake -- only it was not cake. Was it bread? No. Was it a big spongy cookie? No. A muffin? Close -- it was a muffie! "What is a muffie?" you ask. Essentially, a muffie is a muffin top -- where the muffin spreads out minus the stump.

I immediately thought of "The Muffin Tops" Seinfeld episode, when Elaine sold muffin tops at the store "Top of the Muffin To You" where she'd bake the whole muffin, pop off the top and throw out the stump... or at least tried to until the homeless shelter, the sanitation department and even the dump would not take the stump. The homeless shelter lady yelled at Elaine, "Why don't you just drop off some chicken skins and lobster shells."

Panera and the Fair Hill shopping center are so pristine and new that I could not imagine bags of muffin stumps littering the premises. So where are the muffin stumps? On my next weekly shopping trip to Giant, in the frozen food aisle I spied Vitatops 100-Calorie Muffin Tops! Giant's frozen food aisle is near the fish counter -- maybe the muffin stumps are with the lobster shells.

The Heat!

These dog days of summer are more aptly named the St Bernards of the sauna season. Whenever I exit an air-conditioned building, I feel like I've stepped out of a refrigerator and climbed into an oven. Just the other day, as I dragged myself out of the frigid (but oh so comfortable) Giant and was smacked in the face with a wall of baking air, I suddenly heard a voice in my head scream, "The heat! My God, the heat!" I almost started laughing in the parking lot as I recognized this plaintive cry; in the Seinfeld episode called "The Burning," Elaine yells to boyfriend Puddy, "I'm going to h-ll! The worst place in the world. With devils and those caves and the ragged clothing. And the heat! My God, the heat!"

Now of course Olney is nowhere near the worse place on earth! The "devils" are harmless but mischievous little tykes, the local "caves" (Crystal Grottoes Caverns in Boonsboro, MD and Lurray Caverns in Virginia) offer oases for cooling off, and "ragged clothing" in the form of t-shirts, tank tops, shorts, and bathing suits rule! However, I can't escape the St Bernards of summer any more than I can stop hearing Elaine's voice -- "The heat! My God, the heat!"