SCORE!

Look closely.
Yes friends, it’s a Judas Priest coffee cup. You may not be able to tell from the photo, but aside from its obvious excellence, the damned thing is even embossed.
EMBOSSED, I SAY!
Where did it come from, you ask?
Well...
Three of us had gone down to Greely Street to watch one of Eleanore’s friends pass us on the last leg of the 2006 Portland Marathon. Well, we hoped she’d pass. I knew that if I suffered some serious lapse in judgement and sanity and had signed up for this mission, to run 26 miles, and friends were waiting here, at the 20 mile mark, they would never see me pass. I would surely be dead or on a respirator trying to finagle some form of painkiller from the attending paramedics at mile 7, and that’s being generous.
But she passed, we cheered, and then we headed back to the car. We drove it down to Interstate and Russell to jump on the Yellow line to head downtown, meet her friend, presumably, at a pub for congratulations and mouth to mouth. How she planned on being able to enter a crowded pub, sit down, order, let alone eat, let alone walk, let alone talk, after running 26 miles... let’s just say that if she could pull it off I’d feel like more of a fat lazy bastard than I already do.
We had some time to kill before the train came so we wandered into ECO PDX to look at some fancy wood furniture that would, for all intents and purposes, and barring any mysterious inheritance from a relative I had never heard of or a winning lottery ticket that I would never buy, I would never be able to afford. Quality craftsmanship indeed, awe inspiring even, but alas I could never see paying... well, being capable of paying $700 for a dresser that looked like a lacquered madrone tree.
Anyhoo, we browsed and then walked out and I noticed a black coffee cup on the sidewalk by the bus shelter. It had about 1/4" of coffee in it, with cream I could tell, not so sure about its sugar content, and wasn’t planning on ever finding out. I looked close at it and saw that it was a Judas Priest coffee cup. This blew me away. The next thing I noticed was that no one was around. The marathon had come by this place, but it was only the stragglers that were limping by at this point; the walkers, those who could pull a 35 minute mile out of their assess on this one occasion and then be crippled for the remainder of their lives after this, their moment of glory.
I looked around, and back at the coffee cup. No people around. A Judas Priest coffee cup. I had to have it.
Now, I’m not prone to picking things up off the street that I find abandoned. It’s not that I have any sort of aversion to scavenging, it’s just that I rarely come across anything I am driven to snatch up and claim as my own. That said, I had to have this cup. I walked timidly up to it, excited but expecting some burned-out hesher to come shuffling out from some unseen hiding spot and snatch it up, robbing me of my prize.
It didn’t happen.
I picked it up, dumped out the coffee. The cup was cold so I knew it had been sitting there for awhile. I touched the embossed excellence and felt blessed, like someone who was witness to one of those South American Virgin Mary apparitions. The only place around here, other than the bus stop, was the furniture shop we were just in. I knew I had to check and see if it belonged to them. If I didn’t I’d be wracked with guilt at the thought of stealing someone’s cup that they had accidentally left outside during a smoke break. So I took it in, praying that they had no idea whose it was.
"Hey," called to the guy behind the desk working on some spread sheet of sorts on his Mac.
"Is this yours?"
He looked up and smiled.
"No, it’s been there for about 3 hours. It doesn’t belong to us. You’d better take it or I will. That’s a sweet fucking cup."
I didn’t even hesitate.
"OK. See ya." and took off, jumped on the train, and I plan on drinking out of this cup for the rest of my life.
The funny thing is, I don’t even like Judas Priest.
But a Judas Priest coffee cup?
Embossed, no less?
I tell you, it’s the find of a lifetime.
Don’t ruin my day by telling me you can get them for $10 at Hot Topics.