we saw brandon sanderson!!!

Dear friends,

Guess what?  You probably have no idea who he is, but... We. Sat next to. BRANDON SANDERSON*.  While having pho.  >:oO

So we spent a long, but fun day, with Tim's uncle, aunt, cousin Paul and Paul's fiancee Sarah.  We went to eat at the Union Oyster House downtown, which was very delicious, and then took the ferry to Charlestown to see the USS Constitution.  Third time is not the charm because the first time Tim and I went to see it, we had an apartment showing to get to so we had to get out of line from going on the Constitution, then the second time when I went with Tim's mom and his brother James, it was closed, and today... we got there right at 4pm.. which is when it closed.  Booo.

When we were on the T coming home, we decided to get pho since it was already 6pm, slightly hungry (ok, I was like 7.5/10 hungry), and it was right where we got off the train.  So we go to our favorite pho restaurant, Le's:

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Mmmmmm phoooo.  (Source)

Then Tim overhears the next table with like 8 people talking about D&D and Mistborn and nerd things.  We kinda make fun of them and discuss how some nerds have long hair and a beard cause they want to look like Aragon.  Then Tim's like, "the guy next to the Aragon-guy looks like Brandon Sanderson."  I lean back and peek and I was like "yeeaah, maybe a little.  One guy looks like Aragon and one guy looks like Brandon!  haha!"

It was not instantly apparent to us whether it was Mr. Sanderson because on previous book jackets, he looked like this:

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And he looks like this now:

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We still weren't positive it was him... but then as we were splurping away at our pho, Tim catches (ok they were kinda loud... it was a noisy restaurant) that this Brandon Sanderson-lookalike guy says "something something when I sold my novel...."  Um... how many people write... and sell novels?!  Then I googled his picture online to see if it was him.  haha.

Alas, our pho came to an end.  Even though I ate much slower today.  (And that was before I knew Brandon Sanderson was sitting at the next table eating pho.)  His posse of 8 people didn't look like they were going to be leaving anytime soon, so we decided to leave.  SADFACE.  I wanted to grab a hot beverage and wait until they came out (it was in a food complex so there was a Starbucks right across from the resturant and an open sitting area) to ask for a picture or something.  (Since where I was sitting wasn't conducive for a stalker pic.)

When we got home... Tim looked up Mr. Sanderson's tour schedule and he had been in Boston... Harvard to be exect, doing a book signing and giving a talk.  Right in our backyard.  !!!!!  Gah.  I should've signed up for his tour emails or something!  So.  It was indeed Brandon Sanderson.

* So if you have no idea who Brandon Sanderson is but have gotten this far in the post, he's a fantasy author who wrote the Mistborn series, Elantris (the first fantasy novel I've ever read -- I just didn't do fantasy before Tim told me to read Elantris -- and actually really liked), and is now the continuing author (the orginal author Robert Jordan passed away) of the bigg-deal Wheel of Time series, which has cult-following status AND is Tim's favorite fantasy series.

So considering Brandon Sanderson is like... the only fantasy author I like... and that he's penning the remaining Wheel of Time books... he's kind of a big deal.  :]