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…