Engineer friends

Engineers think a bit differently than the rest of us.  I mean that in the nicest way.  After all, my stepmom is an engineer.

I've mentioned my lawyer friend, Shortstuff, on this blog before.  She's engaged to Tallstuff.  He's not only unusually tall, he's also a patent lawyer with an undergraduate degree in engineering.  He's incredibly smart and graduated second from his law school class. 

When Tallstuff helped us move, he spent a half hour arguing with our other lawyer friends about the best way to fit everything in the moving van.  (We have a lot of lawyer friends.  Which is cool if we ever want to sue someone, I suppose, except none of them are "That Type" of lawyer.  However, they are all the type of lawyer that has strong opinions about the best way to load a moving van.)  He also wanted to take off our door frame to get our couch out of the living room, despite my repeated assurances that we did not take it off to get the couch in there.

Tallstuff is also strangely gullible.  We once convinced him that pregnant ladies need a special bathtub, called a "pregnancy tub", and it fit over your normal bathtub and made it bigger.  

We went to a trivia night with Shortstuff and Tallstuff last weekend.  Shortstuff leaned over and whispered to me.  "Ask him what time it is."  I did.  Tallstuff raised one finger to signal for us to wait.  He looked at his watch.

We waited.  And waited some more.

"It's 6:34!" he said at last, proudly.

Shortstuff sighed.  "He keeps his watch set to Greenwich time.  Because it's easier."

Tallstuff looked offended.  "It is easier!  What if I forget to reset my watch after daylight savings?  This makes a lot more sense and I never have to reset it.  Besides, it's gotten a lot easier since I quit trying to move the clock hands mentally in my head and started looking at the time then subtracting the hours."

He was dead serious.  We spent the rest of the night asking him what time it was.  Then snickering.  We're such supportive friends.