When my now-husband was in graduate school, I'd visit him on weekends from college and we'd inevitably end up at a coffee shop I'm not going to name.

At the time, there were two constants there -- the first was this guy who called himself "The Inflected Self," who'd always be hitting on hapless female undergraduates, and the second was "Mr. Strudel," a cherry strudel with a distinctive dent pattern. We saw both of them almost every weekend, year in and year out, and since we were way fonder of Mr. Strudel, we decided to adopt him as a de facto pet. We'd check in every so often to see what he was up to (being a strudel) and whether he'd been sold yet (no).

Now that we're on the other side of town, we don't get to see Mr. Strudel that often, but I hear via seriouseats that said unnamed coffee shop is now a pastry supplier for other cafes, one of which is near where I now live.

I wonder if Mr. Strudel missed me as much as I missed him. I hope so.