my lunch date with sam

last week rodney, jubal and i went to town. jubal and i to run errands and rodney to have the world's longest dental appointment at the LCC dental school. jubal and i went to the bank to cash our check from dad that was for more soaps to replace the ones chuck rhine bought off dad when he visited (!) and then to the art store to spend the money on some giant stamps i found there a few days previous. the giant stamps are exactly what i needed a couple of months ago and i spent a fair amount of time wishing they existed...well, they do. they're stamps (like rubber stamps) of letters, numbers and common writing symbols (they even have a parenthesis!) which are awesome cuz you can use them to "blockprint" t shirts...i always want to make a t shirt for everything i like, but it's a pain in the bum to make a screen just to make one t shirt...well, now i can easily just make one...one for neil gaiman, one for michael pollan (i just devoured in defense of food--read it!!!), and another hundred for everybody else. anyways...
we had a lot of time to spend, waiting for the end of rodney's appointment, and since our card at oregon art supply was filled up and we got a ten buck discount on the stamps, we had money for lunch out. normally i would go to burrito boy or something like that, but they don't have good stuff for jubal--eating pieces of my tortilla doesn't suffice anymore. and then a lightbulb went off for me--fish and chips! jubal loves fries, he sometimes enjoys fish, and it just sounded good. i'd heard good things about newman's fish market (on willamette street)...i've bought their wonderful fish, but never had the fish and chips, since i used to not like fish and chips...so we drove over to newman's and ordered the salmon with a side of slaw, which jubal normally loves, and proceeded to eat our super delicious lunch...it was great and we were having a good time. the lunch window is outside, as is the eating area, and jubal was watching the people and the little birds that hang around to clean up people's crumbs. we were sharing fries and slivers of salmon and talking to each other. fun. then, i look up and who do i see arriving? SAM ELLIOT!!! yes, the moustache ride king. my heart started racing a bit, my nerves all tingling. my mother loves sam elliot and it has been ingrained in me since the age of ten that sam elliot is a real live "ideal man". it's in my cells, you see. so i couldn't help but be excited. i mean, have you heard his voice?! he rocks (i'll have to make a sam elliot t shirt, eh?). it was really him! no one else seemed to notice, until he went to order and you could see the lady in the window turn to jello inside, though she maintained her cool, like me. heh. and he sauntered over to a table, eugene weekly tucked under his arm. his pony tail was white and his moustache was subdued and he's not as tall as you might think. but he's still HIM. so it was neat. other people started to notice, which i felt bad for, because they seemed to feel entitled to go up to him and say "YOU'RE SAM ELLIOT, RIGHT!!! BLAH BLAH BLAH", and i'm pretty sure one lady asked him for a kiss, which he declined to give her, but countered with a handshake. my thinking was that it was cool to see sam elliot, but for sam it probably wasn't that cool to see me, so i'd just leave him alone to read the weekly and eat his lunch. which he was eating like ten feet from me and jubal. ahhh. it was cool. the place cleared out and for a while it was just jubal, me and sam. i don't think he noticed we were having a lunch date, but i still enjoyed it. we all finished at about the same time and just as i finished getting jubal settled in his car seat, sam was walking to his car. i still didn't say anything. but part of me wanted to tell him how awesome he is and that my mother, myself, and my daughters all love him (he plays lee scoresby in the golden compass and i was just explaining the day before to the girls who sam elliot was, because rodney and i joke about sam and his moustache a lot). but it didn't seem right to bother him with my adoration. he was obviously having a town day, and those are tiring and it was hot out and a bunch of people had already accosted him. so i let him be. it was, hands down, the most exciting lunch i've ever had.