My unofficial job description includes the title "engineer wrangler". I make Power Point presentations, revise instruction manuals, scan medical records, create lots of technical drawings, etc., for the engineers in my office. And the engineer that needs the most wrangling is Uncle Chuck.
Uncle Chuck (or Chuckie, as he's also called) is considered one of the bright minds of electrical engineering, which means he doesn't know much about computers. To my credit, over the past year I've taught him how to save files to a CD, how to import slides from other Power Point presentations (or, as he calls it, "port them in"), and how to save an attached file from an e-mail. He tends to repeat the same stories, so he requires some patience. We tried assigning numbers to his stories at one point. (Important: do not mention Schenectady, NY to Chuck.) To his credit, when his presentations or papers win awards, he takes me to lunch since I did all the hard work - such as having to decipher his handwriting. Last time we went to a very nice Italian restaurant and had some great calamari. So science fairs apparently do prepare you for the competitive world of technical professional seminars.
Uncle Chuckie enjoys traveling. Cleverly, he takes a month-long vacation every year right before he gives a seminar where people actually pay money to sit and hear him talk about his little corner of the electrical engineering universe for an entire week - an event I've christened "Chuck-a-Palooza". His timing could be a little better. Before he left I had to pry all the information I needed out of him to get all the presentations and course materials ready. This required me to listen to him rhapsodize about Rick Steves' travel guides, about how he sent an e-mail agenda of his trip to his sons with links to all the hotels they'll be staying at, how he's going to sit at some cafe and watch the French girls go to work, how in a matter of days he would be drinking wine and eating crepes filled with ice cream. To which I reply, "And while you're doing that, do spare a moment to think of me hunched over my computer doing all these technical drawings for your presentations." He did actually hear me say that once, because he acknowledged my statement with "I know, dear, and I appreciate it." Hopefully he'll bring me a cool souvenir. He's from Cleveland, so he's not all that bad. Even though he spells insert 'incert'.
Chuckie called me from Paris a couple of weeks ago. The food was great, he could see the Eiffel Tower from the apartment he was staying in - and there's a lot of dog poop on the Parisian sidewalks. I'll have to wait to hear all his other stories when he gets back next week. Besides, it's almost a little too quiet when he's not around.
