It’s been a ban­ner week here at the Wel­ling­tonista Towers for drink­ing net­work­ing oppor­tun­it­ies. Yes­ter­day was the VIP night at Beck­on, tonight was a Ponoko show­case at the Para­mount, and tomor­row we’re meet­ing up to dis­cuss our evil plans for world dom­in­a­tion.

Beck­on was flush with Wel­ling­tonis­tas. Martha was there to rep­res­ent Baby­li­cious, Tom was there for that oth­er site, pho­to­graph­ing the event for Tex­ture, Hadyn was there to look cool, and I was just grate­ful to have a reas­on to leave the house that was­n’t a job inter­view. Turns out it was bloody lucky we went along, because as well as being able to glimpse all of Beck­on’s lovely stock (the place was rather full, mak­ing a prop­er look too much of a shuff­ling chal­lenge, but I’ll def­in­itely be back), four out of the five spot prizes were won by Wel­ling­tonis­tas. And it was­n’t rigged.

Then of course, tonight was the show­case even­ing for the very clev­er people who’ve been part of the beta users for Ponoko. See­ing the fur­niture, toys, jew­el­ery, lamp­shades, chess­boards and oth­er awe­some things that people had designed which were cut out with a frickin’ laser beam made me wish that I had design sens­ib­il­it­ies instead of just an obses­sion with apo­strophes and organ­ising leagues. But on that note, check out the very cool tables that Jeff designed, not just because they’re awe­some, but because he’s the Xero cap­tain in the Wel­ling­tonista Quiz League and come Tues­day, after we kick their ass, he’ll need all the pos­it­ive com­ments he can get. And it was great to get to meet/see again vari­ous oth­er mem­bers of the Wel­ling­ton inter­web com­munity – I’m con­vinced that Sue knows/pimps every­one in the whole wide world, and it was amus­ing listen­ing to Alan and Steph­en Judd catch­ing up on old times (like that time that Al Gore inven­ted the inter­net).

If you would like to join the Wel­ling­tonista on their next social out­ing, we invite you to stalk us tomor­row night. We’ll be meet­ing at a secret bar loc­a­tion, at 5.30, to which I’ll give you two clues: it was once a mys­tery bar, and you haven’t got a hope in cell of find­ing it…