My friend R and I were at Chez Panisse Cafe last night. She is from Southern California, but has been in the Bay Area for several weeks. The meal was a last hurrah, as she is leaving to go home this week.
So it's Chez Panisse and it wouldn't be a surprise if we were to see someone famous there. R and I went to college together in an area where there are tons of celebrities, so we are old-hat at spotting them and then acting non-chalant.
We were waiting at the small bar upstairs for our table, and a large-ish group walked in the door. R's eyes widened. "I think they just said Six Apart," she whispered to me. Ever so slightly, I turned and saw Ben and Mena, the founders of Six Apart, the company that created TypePad and Moveable Type. They were just being seated at a large table.
Here's where the story gets pretty geeky, friends (as if it's not already). You would think that we had seen Prince Charles. We were totally excited about seeing a table of people from a company that we both hold in such high regard. We were seated at our table by this time and discussing what we should do about our sighting. Ignore them? Go by and say hi? Take a picture? We finally decided on a perfect solution: We wrote them a note. R wrote it on the back of a Chez Panisse postcard and it said something to the effect of "Dear Six Apart people, congratulations on the new release. We love it (actually we drew a heart here). You are our celebrity blogger sighting of the week. You rock (yes .... we did write you rock)! From two loyal Type Pad bloggers."
We called over a server. "Do you see that table that is over by the entrance? Please take this note to them, and don't tell them who it's from!" He obliged. So there we were, at Chez Panisse, mecca of the food world, passing notes. Another server came by. "They loved your note and want you to come by the table." The bad-secretkeeper first server had told her who we were.
So as we left, we stopped by and said hi like the stalkers that we were. They were all very nice and seemed happy to meet a couple of fans. It was a great geekdom celebrity sighting. Oh, and the food was great too - but that's for another post.
