You know, me and my wife are two very odd souls. In terms of our pairing, I mean. She’s all into geeky stuff, going to conventions where they dress up as people and buy overpriced merchandise, and I…am not. Suppose I’m a typical Aussie guy in many respects. I like barbecues and going on long drives in the country.So Alana is off at Con-Con, the biggest gaming convention ever supposedly, and I’m at another convention: SteelCon. It’s a convention, all about steel. I’m not a marine stainless steel welder, but I’m seriously considering a qualification because they’ve got some amazing things going on there. I can’t describe them, really, because…it’s all to do with steel, and marine fabrication in Melbourne. I don’t know, maybe I just like the idea of welding underwater, because that sounds sick, and a little bit dangerous. A job isn’t really that exciting to me if there’s not at least a small chance of injury.
Alana doesn’t agree, of course. She likes to watch shows where people are firing magical lasers at each other and having their heads exploded, but then she goes and gets all stressed when I say I’m going to complete a job on a transformer, or something with a bit of a hazard. I’m not into that stuff in fiction; I get it all from real life, I guess.
They had a special display a SteelCon, with the latest and greatest fishing equipment being welded in real time to one of their display boats. Now THAT would be an awesome way to spend a weekend, on a boat, with some shiny new bait boards and bow rails welded on, especially if they were welded on by me. But Alana would rather us curl up on the sofa and watch Neat-Flicks. Exactly how we keep finding stuff we both consent to watch is a mystery; by all accounts it just shouldn’t happen.
-Pete