Muffinquest: We did it!

They're real and they're amazing.

Rather, YOU did it.
Some time shortly before 7:00 PM last night, with people already present at Tre Amici @ The Bunker for an unveiling party for a muffin that may or may not need to be named, we counted the pennies at the bottom of a donation can and somehow ended up with the figure of $1,502.35 (FYI: about $1100 of that came in during the last 36 hours or so).
The dream of a Clark Muffin was a reality, by a margin of $2.35. Shortly after a tray of fresh-from-the-oven blueberry and white chocolate muffins (now known as Clarks) was passed around for the multitudes to sample, I addressed the throngs with the following remarks:

"When this campaign began, I had hoped to stand before you today in the pantheon of legendary individuals that have been immortalized by having something edible named after them. However, since Tampa is apparently all out of pantheons, I am standing before you in this coffee shop instead. But I was inspired by the greats who came before me, people who could say EAT ME and not upset anyone. I mean people like Tampa's own T. Hampton Dohrman who has a sandwich named in his honor at this very establishment, Woody Allen who has one named after him at New York's famed Carnegie Deli and of course, Alfredo Fettucine who has a presence at every Olive Garden in the world. I thin k it was the great Dr. Martin Ala King who said, "I have a dream". Well, I have a dream too. It usually involves women in nurse uniforms chasing me with these gigantic thermometers but that's not important now. What is important is that due to the acheivement of reaching my goal ogf $1500.00 for Relay For Life in the fight against cancer, the management of Tre Amici @ The Bunker have seen fit to honor this accomplishment by naming a muffin after me. Which is a total rip-off as far as you're concerned, because you, if you donated, actually paid for it."

And that last part is the most important and it's true: it's not anything I did, it's something you did. My only role was to try to wrap some silliness around the act of rasing funds to fight a horrible disease, hopefully providing some entertainment in the process. I couldn't be more in awe over how so many people stepped up and offered so much. I have a buttload of thank you notes to send out (if you haven't gotten one yet, you will; if you have, you'll probably get another, just so I make sure I don't forget anyone) and I will be getting to that task in the next day or so. Right now, I do need to single out Jessie Stehlik and her staff at Tre Amici (in particular, baking genius Victoria Boukalis) for not only indulging the silliness in the first place but for actually getting hands-on involved in the dirty work. This literally could not have happened without her and them. Look past the nonsense and it's a good thing you all accomplished and you should feel good about it.

So what's next? Well, I'm exhausted and the actual event of Relay For Life doesn't even happen until tomorrow. Then there's the thank yous, plus I still have to do a drawing to see who won a gift basket of the things. I also still owe Marissa and a few others their own dedicated blog posts. Don't forget that I have to find time to do my actual jobs and I still don't have a car. And not the least of matters is the fact that I'm really looking forward to going at least a month without typing the word "muffin". So with all that, I can't even think about getting involved in any goofy schemes. Maybe I'll just shut things down for a while and quietly sink beneath the waves, so to speak.

Then again, when does voting for Creative Loafing's "Best of the Bay" awards start...?