"I WELD! I'M A WELDER!!"

No, cool as they were, the sea dragons did not offer welding lessons. This is Melissa, back in the frigid north while Andrea basks in the glorious warm fuzzies of a GA vacation. But Monday's high is supposed to be 20 degrees, so she should be consoled that she won't have missed much :). Thankfully I've been too busy this week at school to have to spend too many hours in the deathly silence of her non-presence.

What did I do at school, you may ask (having no idea since you skipped over the above title)? Well, I'll tell you! I WELDED things! WOOOOOOO!!! I feel like I'm in that movie that was mentioned in some random midweek meeting video series in Bible School, which ended up being an answer that Claire got in a trivial pursuit game -- something about a woman welder who was also a ballerina or something (the more I write, the more this sounds like some very strange dream...or a very bad speech. Help me, Claire!). Anyway. yes. We've been making a bunch of quick models in my 3-Dimensional Synthesis class, but now we're moving on to a four-foot sculpture. Apparently the direction I chose in the models will translate best into steel rods and thick wire mesh. Joy. I was quite skeptical at first, but I picked up some short rods from Home Depot (haha... Despot... B&C, you're awesome) and pretended I knew what I was doing in the huge and intimidating Sculpture Room. I rolled them into curves on some steel-roller-machine, and then I got my welding lesson. It was hard... but I persevered. I was comforted by the story my prof. told about a girl who caught on fire and didn't realize it (and was thus confused when her professor started hitting her). hmmm... And it was a little freaky having to stand behind a curtain and wear a pitch-black helmet to avoid blindness. And I kept messing up, and the machine kept jamming, and my professor kept having to fix it (most of the time it wasn't my fault, I was relieved to find). But once it finally started working again it was so comparitively easy that I picked it up pretty fast. I got some sweet beads going, let me tell you (that's a little insider welder language there...). Then I got to actually start welding my sculpture, and now I'm excited. It really works! I can make things out of steel! Now that I'm fully empowered, there's no going back. I have six or so twelve-foot rods just waiting to be bent and welded into submission. I will be holding a drawing for potential buyers of my finished product (No, it won't look like anything except steel rods and wire... but oh, what tremendous forms and activation of space! :).

Okay, that's all I want to write about that.