This blog continues from the last entry...
I have loved Star Trek since I was a young girl. When they came out in the '80s with Next Gen, I was thrilled. I always thought it would be so cool to be a teacher on a Galaxy class ship and have all sorts of adventures and see things no one has ever seen before. (I believe the teachers had adventures too!)
In late 1994, I was planning on quitting my job and moving back to California to be close to family. In the meantime, I had become pretty much a loner and while I enjoy mu own company, I wanted to break ourt of my comfort zone. I had heard of local Star Trek Fan clubs here in town, but dismissed the idea as crazy. What would one possibly DO in a fan club?
One day in the living section of the newspaper, there was an article, with pictures on one of the clubs. They looked like they were having fun. Reading the article, I found it was a gathering place for those who loved Trek to get together and visit, do community service and generally just have a good time.
So, after a couple of months of hemming and hawing, I finally went to a meeting. I stood at the closed door, willing myself to go in (I HATE going into a group of people I don't know, even now it is difficult, though not as much.) After a few minutes of arguing with myself, I pushed myself through the door.
Now don't laugh...There were people in uniform and costumes acting as if it was perfectly normal to be that way(Okay...I hear sniggering...cut that out! I dress in Ren Faire costumes too, I never hear any sniggers, unless of course people are kind enough to do when I'm not around! 
).
Let me address the geek thing here and now...yes a couple of my friends were what would be considered "geeky", but all of us were different in some respect or another. We only had one fellow who was the typical "Trek" geek and he was so annoying!
Anyway, they were very nice and I felt right at ease, so much so, I even handled getting up and introducing myself(another thing I detest doing in public groups!). I had a lot of fun and found out we had more in common than just Trek.(Ren Faires, RolePlaying, movies, all kinds of things) We were well rounded geeks! 
I came out of my shell and because of my association with this group I changed alot. Family and friends were amazed...but that is another story for another time!
I joined In February of 1995, Michael joined in April of 1995, we had our first date in October of 1995 and were married 11 months to the day later. Our "Ship" was known as the "Love Boat" because so many couples, married and otherwise met there.
One of the great things about this club was that we could, if we wished, create characters , alter egos if you will, that we portrayed and wrote stories about. We did some role playing and at the meetings we were almost always in character. But The coolest thing is we had a Fan-zine, where we were able to write stories about the "ship", the crew and our "adventures". We also could contribute poems and artwork. It was wonderful and we had some real talent in our group.
)