Dallas Fan Days

It is October y'all. It. Is. October.   There are so many costumed events this month, I had to go and get a dry erase board calendar just to keep track of everything. 
Yesterday was Day 1 of Fan Days here in Dallas, a sci-fi convention that used to be geared toward Star Wars, but which recently embraced all other forms of sci-fi.
The original plan was to make new Star Wars Imperial uniforms with the Lord of Lace, and tromp around the entire con like we owned the place. But, we ran out of time, the uniforms were never made, and he ended up having to work, so it all fell apart.  But, it turned out that my shipmates from the USS Navras, the chapter of Starfleet International that I'm a member of, were meeting up at the con for some shenanigans! 
And, George Takei was going to be there. I had to go.
I almost didn't make it. The convention center is all of 45 minutes away on a good day, but the city of Irving had decided that, hey, why don't we make our construction zones really confusing and take down aaaaall the labels on the exits.  So, none of the exits had names or numbers, just the word EXIT without any identification. So, instead of taking 45 minutes, it took me nearly 2 hours because people were confused, I was lost, I ended up at DFW airport and had to escape, and it was just a big mess. I had left the house in plenty of time for the photo op with Takei, and I almost missed it!
Thankfully, I didn't miss it. I parked and made it into the building and up to the photo op area, only to hear a bunch of people start calling my name!  It turned out to be my shipmates!  They let me in line with them since they were near the front and the end of the line was somewhere around the corner.
And Mr. Takei was awesome. He poked fun at our bald captain, telling him that he "had the head of a captain!", gave our resident trill an "Oh my" because, yes, her spots went all the way down, and he told me I had a lovely uniform and wore it well.
We nanced around the dealer's room for a while (again, Cardassia was almost completely unrepresented, tsk tsk!), where we ran into the crew of the USS Joshua, another local ship, before heading up to hear Mr. Takei's Q&A panel. He was a riot to listen to, and we learned that Star Trek VI should actually have been called "Captain Sulu to the Rescue".

We spent more time in the dealer's room, where we were flagged down by one of the Trek actors so he could get a picture with us! His name was Rick Fitts, and we ended up hanging out with him at his table for a while. Very cool guy.  I also met Richard Jefferies, the brother of Matt Jefferies, who designed the original Enterprise, and who Jefferies tubes are named after!  He and his wife were just wonderful, we ended up talking for a long time. :D 

The crew ended up leaving once the con shut down at 6 and heading to Chipotle for dinner, where we hung out for a few hours before dispersing. It was a fabulous day of geekery and shenanigans, and I am so glad I am part of such a wonderful crew!