Photo by Caylee Hoover

What a shindig! This past Saturday was our March shindig, and there's all sorts of stuff to tell! We had special guests, special gifts, a homemade board game, good old Firefly episodes, and a Macayos after-shindig! Worth it!

First off, we got a visit from the Executive Director of Kids Need To Read, Denise Gary. For someone within earshot of Nathan Fillion, she's extraordinarily friendly and approachable. She's very excited about the upcoming Phoenix Cactus ComicCon where KNTR is the featured charity. Even better, she really wants to do some things with the Browncoats. There are some basic volunteer jobs she'll be calling on us to staff, and we're working on a game of some sort that the Browncoats could host during the con. Keep an eye on the Yahoo Group, I think we'll be discussing that soon.

One thing I think is important to remember is that Denise is one of us. She was a Nathan Fillion fangirl who went on to form an group of her own that lobbied behind the scenes for Nathan. Despite actively keeping her work secret, not seeking recognition for what she did, she was noticed and approached to run the charity that P.J. Haarsma and Nathan Fillion were forming. Now all fangirl enthusiasm has tranformed into a huge passion for the work that she does as part of Kids Need To Read, giving books to schools and kids who would never learn to read otherwise. The stories she tells are crazy inspiring. I hope all of you get a chance to talk to her sometime.

Also at the shindig, Ray Sanders (our own costumed Jayne if you've followed CSTS pictures over the years) stopped in to deliver a plaque for our Best of Phoenix award! It's shiny (literally) and super awesome to have something like that instead of having to pull out the magazine every time we want to brag. We're still trying to figure out who's wall we get to hang it on, but expect to see it at future events, cons and shindigs.

Along with all that, we got a chance to remind ourselves a bit about our original reason to be... Firefly. We brought Firefly Clue, which may be getting fixed up into something more sturdy and professional looking! Just don't expect us to be selling it as merch any time soon, copyright issues would get us clobbered. It's still a great fun game though and if there's interest I'll post the details as to how to make your own version. So even though it was a moderately attended and surprisingly low decibal shindig, it was a blast and we made some great new friends.

Next Shindig will be March 20th, going to the Rennaissance Festival. Post somewhere (yahoo group, comments here, whatever) if you'd like to go so we can get you the meetup details. Whatever the case make sure you wear something to mark you as a Browncoat. You'd be surprised how common Jayne hats are at the Ren Fair! After that, the first Saturday of April we'll be back at Bookmans, and April 17th we'll be taking a trip to Mars at the Challenger Space Center. Again, let us know if you plan on tagging along so we can get you the meetup info.