Sometimes you may want to both never pay the bill and get laid. Whipping out some game involving art, or environmental think-tanks can trump a tech smokescreen when panties are at stake.
In the SW, people just ask: What do you do?' Since I am old, I pause and twinkle a little. My initial answer is usually accepted. I say: "I do anything I want." An italian food warehouse had a "Feast" last Saturday. We were crunching away at six kinds of pre meal snacks that have some french name. The polite zinger came across the table to the corner pocket where I was sitting. The parry was:"Seriously?" So I asked about what she did. She and her husband stepped up to the plate and hit homers. I had never met a descendant of the the original Buffalo Soldiers. They still maintained the original homestead. In Arizona, everyone is from somewhere else. Even the local Apaches. Since I fly and they explore ruins, we talked about how the olden wagon trails can still be seen from high altitudes in the clear dry air. Desert plants are slow growing and the coverage is very low to begin with. We all had found Apache tears in desert intermitant flowing stream beds. (Onyx translucent pebbles) I heard:".....so what do you really do?" I got specific: "I do the Robinhood deal with Wall Street." She was a nurse practitioner at the Tucson VA (87 buildings) and I said my focus was on PTSD re: Vets and their families. I always worry when I am sitting in a booth at a cafe. Most do take off their spurs but we still argue about why kids can't pack guns to highschool in the holsters that always bang the sides of booths as us guys sit down for coffee. Cinko de Mayo is the same as the fourth; somebody always gets to go to the hospital when the rounds finally do come down somewhere. Its only fair in AZ to rob Wallstreet to protect our Vets. The view of Robinhood in AZ is that he packed a 45 in his holster. We have a lot of shook up Vets that know they aren't getting a fair shake. Having a trading room in Tucson (NOT pronounced Tuk Son as telemarketers do) sounds like having an all nite poker room in the hind quarters of a cafe. Taking down Wall Street everyday is like making sure the rustlers know to not fool around with the cattle growers on the desert. Retail trading in Tucson is alive and well. Word is getting out on campus (40K students) that poker is not the only way to pay your way through college. It is SOP to have trading rooms on campus, too. One kid's mother started it all many years back; she knew her son could make more trading than just tuition and college cost stuff. We have had a couple of Econ profs want to drop in....LOL.... Donna and her hubby hang out in the Tucson environment as well.
How long did it take you to realize that your expected performance level is 100% (i.e. everything working and no fires anywhere). Anything less, and you weren't doing your job? IT is a field where you get blamed both if everything is working and if anything is going wrong...
You can also try this answer : "I work in multi-media" Most people have no idea what that means but it sure will impress them