[Sorry this is so late in publishing…had a family health emergency I had to attend to}

I departed Kansas City on Friday evening on a relatively uneventful flight to Vegas.  I had a 2 hour layover there where I promptly lost $40 on airport slots.  The flight from Vegas to LAX was like 47 minutes, which is why I thought it odd that the guy next to me on the plane decided he needed to take his shoes off.  Even weirder, and somewhat irritating,  he stretched his leg over to the under-seat storage in front of MY seat and took his shoe off and left it there.

I arrived at LAX a little before 11pm and found my way out to the hotel courtesy shuttle area.   It was misting out, and slightly chilly but it still felt pretty nice (since I was under an overhang and not getting directly misted on).  I was a little sad I hadn’t booked an earlier flight since a bunch of people got together for a locations visit gathering.   But I eventually made it to the hotel, although the other shuttles and buses and cabs and cars all trying to leave LAX tried to prevent us from doing so.  Seriously, I have mad respect for anyone who has to regularly drive through that airport and doesn’t get into a massive wreck.

It made me happy to see the Castle Convention info on the hotel’s weekend schedule as I waited to check in.  I got my key-card and made my way to my room, which was confusing  and took a while (there were weird corridors and the room numbering would change from hall to hall).  I unpacked and was kindof wired so I decided to explore the hotel.  I wandered around the pool area and the lobby floor, trying to get the lay of the land.  Luckily I didn’t get lost, and I didn’t have anyone yelling at me for wandering the meeting rooms area in the middle of the night.  I also saw the sign at the Starbucks in the lobby that they would be serving the “Beckett” for the weekend….grande skim latte with 2 pumps sugar-free vanilla.   I was happy to see it, but I actually don’t like coffee, so I never did buy a cup of it.

Oh, and before I went back to my room, I took my first elevator shot for the photo challenge…

It’s me on the floor with the camera pointed up at the mirrored ceiling.

The next morning I awoke and showered and put on my ‘Castle’s Coffee’ shirt and headed down, not knowing what to expect.  I went to the registration table and got my snazzy badge and lanyard and the schedule for the weekend.

Also with my ticket, I got this Castle coffee cup…

Next I waited in line at a merchandise table.  There weren’t too many people in line but it seemed to take forever.  Luckily I was joined by Chelsea, whom I’d met at SDCC in July, so I was not alone in line anymore *YAY*!   It was early morning for me and I’m generally not super talkative at that time, so I’m sure I was at least a little awkward, if still excited for the day.

I got to the merch table and proceeded to spend a chunk on some stuff…Castle trinkets and a bag to put them in.  Oh, and some Castle coffee.  Morning is Murder.   Yes, I know I said I don’t like coffee, but I still wanted to have it.  I don’t know if I’ll ever even open it, but I got one for me and one for a friend.

Finally I took my seat.  It was assigned which definitely has it’s perks, but then I can’t sit by anyone I know.  Also, at least for one of the Q&A’s, the lady between me and the stage had some really big hair going on so that was slightly annoying to try and lean around, but what can ya do?

They did their welcome/intro and then had the first auction.  A lot of signed memorabilia, things like that.  One thing I really wanted was a sweathirt, which I believe is for the staff, and not available to the public.  I put in a bid pretty high, but I did get outbid and didn’t feel I should go any further on that.  To make up for that, I decided to buy a Sereni-Tee from Jason Palmer’s table along with the Castle print they were featuring.

There was a morning Q&A session with Marta Evry, Warren Bowman, Christopher Brow (editors and a camera guy).  It was interesting to learn a bit about what goes on with those 2 aspects.  We got autographs from them after that.   Next was a photo session with Tamala Jones (Lanie) and Penny Johnson Jerald (Gates).  After waiting in line for a while I got to get my pic taken with both of them.  They were super nice and both gave me a hug.  I think I look like a dweeb in my pictures.

After pics there was a luncheon which Penny and Tamala and the crew members from the morning’s Q&A all mingled with us while we ate.  I was sitting at a table with the girl who does Tamala’s fan site (who’s from France), and she gave Tamala a birthday present.  It was a sweet moment to see.   Also at the table was a lady I met at SDCC while waiting overnight for Firefly, who’s from Canada, and another girl from England.  It made me feel like it’s really not a big deal for me to have flown 1,357 miles to attend.

After lunch there was a Q&A with Tamala & Penny, which was hilarious.  I also learned that Penny is currently in law school, and last year fell out of a tree and lost her memory (though unsure if it was just for a while, or just some of her memory?) and lost her photographic memory.  Also, one of the fans asked Tamala to sing something for us (since she’d sung in Blue Butterfly) and she did while the audience snapped along.  It was really pretty awesome.

After that we got to get autographs from the two of them, and then it was time for Zumba.  Penny organized a zumba instructor to come in and have a class for us.  I’ve done Zumba a few times, and usually enjoy it so I participated.  This lady was awesome and intense!  I was so dang sweaty…along with everyone else, at least.  Also for some oddness, Argo the service dog was barking for a bit while everyone was clapping along to the music.  Then at the end, Penny gave everyone a sweaty hug on their way out.  Really, super nice!

After showering and a little cool-down time, I met up with Chelsea and Micha (also met at SDCC) and we went out to dinner at Casey’s, which is better known in the Castleverse as The Old Haunt.

Here’s the pic I took of us (at night…in the rain…with cell camera of not great quality)

But here’s a picture in better quality…

This is the scene where they’re outside…

And the X-Files scene…

We convinced the bouncer to let us in to eat (they were carding, and Chelsea is under 21).  Good luck for us!  While we were eating, Chelsea mentioned this was the same bar they shot the scene in X-Files, Fight the Future where Mulder has his drunken rant.  I could totally see it once I went around to the bathroom and passed by the actual bar.  It made me pretty happy.

After dinner we did our best to navigate to Sprinkles, a cupcake and ice cream place.  It’d heard of the cupcake ATM that they have (I’d read that Honey Boo Boo Child got her head stuck in it), but that seemed to be out of order when we got there, so we just got ice cream, which did not disappoint.  Anytime I can get banana, I’m pretty happy.

Back at the hotel, we basically had an elevator photo-shoot.  It took some finagling…stopping random passers-by, blocking the door sensor with feet and purses, and button abusing to keep elevators coming to the floor we were on, but I liked what we came up with…

After we went our separate ways, I turned on the TV in my room to find a Castle episode on ABC.  I grabbed my phone to tweet the others, but Micha beat me to it.

After that, I worked on my Castle T-Shirt.  I’d started it right before SDCC, but have been adding to it since I decided to go to Castle Con.  I’ve been drawing everything with fabric markers.  Here’s what it looks like now…

Then………I couldn’t sleep.  I couldn’t figure out why; I was plenty tired from the day.  Luckily I was able to find a string of things on TV to pass the time, including House, the movie Safe House, multiple episodes of Cowboy Bebop and Inuyasha on Cartoon Network, and then around 6 some old school cartoons came on.  Some solid Bugs Bunny, Tweety and Coyote & Roadrunner.  But THEN there was some -new- Loony Toons….Bugs and Daffy in present day.  I wouldn’t have thought to be so weirded out by seeing Daffy using a laptop to update his resume, but I was.

After a while of that, I thought I might be able to get at least one or two hours sleep before stuff started up for the day so I turned off the TV and tried… unsuccessfully.   I was feeling pretty funky by then…what I call Zombie Mode.  I ended up missing a good chunk of the morning schedule.   I did get my autographs from all the Bowmans, though!

Here’s me and my Castle shirt and my ”I just took a shower but don’t want to blow dry so here’s my wet hair up-do’ selfie:

I met up with Chelsea and Micha and we had a quick lunch adventure to Subway complete with back alleys, puddles and pot-holes.  We ate in the hotel lobby and all sortof switched our brains off for a little while as we waited for the VIP lunch to be over and the next round of Q&A’s and Autographs with  Armin Shimerman, who was in the episode The Final Frontier (but I think I’ll always know him best as Quark) and Luke Reichle, Costume Designer.  Luke amazed everyone by showing up in the Nebula 9 uniform, which he claimed was ill-fitting, but didn’t look too bad.

near the end of the Con, I spent some time chatting with people hanging around Jason Palmer’s booth, including Jason and his wife (who is adorbs).

I stuck around in the room waiting for the closing announcements, hoping they would show some of the elevator shots people had taken over the weekend (since I’d been in several), but it was just a quick thanks and letting us know we raised approximately $35K for charity over the weekend.

Sunday night after everything was over, I headed down to the lobby with my netbook since that was the only place I could get FREE wi-fi.   I was sitting there messing with the pics from the weekend when a group of girls gather for a group picture near where I’m sitting.  They were girls from the Con but I didn’t actually meet any of them during the weekend.  Then they all move to the side a bit, which puts them directly in front of me.  They take one shot and the one with the camera says ‘ok, one more!’  so I quickly shove my netbook onto the table next to me and stand up on the chair and pull off an amazing photobomb.  Seriously, Nathan Fillion would be proud.

I sat back down, all satisfied with myself and proceed to start working on the netbook again.  A few mins go by when someone looking through the pictures on the camera yells out ‘hey everybody turn around and look at this girl that photobombed us!’   They actually found it hilarious.  I chatted with them for a little bit and they complemented and took pictures of my Castle shirt.  A few mins later, after I’d settled back down with the computer once again, I see 2 of the girls doing a funny dance.   They saw me watching them and asked if I knew what the ‘Sloppy Swish’ was.   Aaand, go figure, I actually do…so they ask if I want to sloppy swish with them.  Sure, why not…so there’s like 6 of us doing the Sloppy Swish in the lobby of the hotel for a minute.

For educational purposes, this is the Sloppy Swish:

My flight home didn’t leave until the morning, so I spent the evening packing and even went down to the hot tub and chatted with a gal from Canada and 3 Hawaiian flight attendants (none of which had even heard of Castle, but I think at least the Canadian girl will check it out after I talked it up).

Monday morning, while going through security at LAX, I was wearing my Serenity shirt and the TSA lady asked me if that was Jason Bateman.  I mentioned on Twitter that I personally never really saw THAT much likeness between the two of them, but obviously people do.

Final Thoughts:  Next time, I definitely want to coordinate with people when buying tickets so I can sit by people I know!  Also, my friends and family would be amazed to know that even though I’m a huge Castle fangirl, I feel like small potatoes compared to some of the other people at this event (think Comic Book Guy on Simpsons as a Castle fan…and a woman)