It was over dinner and a few glasses of red wine that I thought it was time to broach a difficult subject with my partner of ten years. A subject that I had been wanting to discuss for a few months. I started off the conversation with the immortal words "I've had a great idea".

The response was what I had expected, it was a sigh, and with her head in her hands she let out a muffled "Oh no"

I've had a history of sharing my great ideas with her so she knew she could be in for a long night of negotiations. Two years ago one of my great ideas was I thought we needed to buy a muscle car, my reasoning was that I was concerned that we weren't doing enough to contribute to global warming, and I felt guilty that the hole in the ozone layer was getting smaller and that we were somewhat responsible for that. We brought a muscle car.

"Is this going to require that we open another bottle of wine, or make a strong cup of coffee", she said. I went and got another bottle of wine from the rack.

"I want to build a flight simulator", her eyes glazed over with complete un-interest and un-concern. Fantastic start I thought, this might be easier then I imagined it would be, there was a major problem though.

You see I knew that she was thinking that I wanted to buy a new PC, add my existing peripherals on it and wham bam thank you mam one flight simulator, simple. "Is that it, go for it" she said with the sense of relief written all over her face. "I don't think you fully understand my idea, I want to build a flight simulator that's a complete 737 cockpit", their was silence. "How much space will it take up in the office" she said, the glaze gone from her eyes and the look concern creeping back on her face. "Oh no space at all, it will be in the garage", "Well how much space will it take up in the garage", she said fully concerned and somewhat confused. "Well as much as a 737 cockpit would take up", the penny dropped, "WHAT, you want a full size 737 cockpit in the garage, the whole thing, the whole front end of a 737 you want to have in the garage", Oh dear the head has gone back in the hands already and she hasn't even asked me how much its going to cost yet.

Negotiations are on going

Darryl