Mrs D: What are you doing?
Me: Trying to think of something intelligent and engaging to write on my blog
Mrs D: What’s a blog?
Me: It’s a kind-of website about me and my work and what I’m up to
Mrs D: Tell me what you do again?
Me: WHAT?? How many times do I have to explain it …*SIGH*
Mrs D: Sorry – just tell me once more – I’ll listen this time, I promise
Me: I’m responsibile for … <<repeat same explanation I’ve offered a million times before>>
Mrs D: When are you going to put that shelf up in the bathroom?
Me: *SIGH*
Inside out 
obviously you need a different explanation.
I have road-tested it on third parties and refined it many times … maybe it’s not the explanation that needs changing! 🙂
I get “I don’t see why you waste your time on this. Who’s interested in what you do, and what your views are?”
Trying to explain that in my case it’s thinking out loud, sharing views, and trying to learn doesn’t get me very far.
In my case, I understand I’m chainsawing the firewood tomorrow…
For me explaining what I do to my girlfriend is straightforward enough. She gets it, probably because she’s far more intelligent than I’ve ever got a hope of being.
It’s when she tries to explain her job to me that the comprehension breaks down. As an immunology scientist working for a pharmacetical comany, and a Doctor to boot, she does very clever things with cells and stuff (my term!) and researches new experimentational approaches to drugs. So next time you take some drugs for an ailment, you have her, in part, to thank. I never accept anything she offers me to drink…….
I understand what a centrifuge is and what a pipette does, but as for Treg assays, phenotyping, differentiation and characterisation of T cell subsets (murine and human)and the isolation and culture of PBMCs and Tcells (e.g. CD4+, CD45RA, CD45RO and CD4+CD25 cells and suppression proliferation (are you keeping up?) – eh what the ****?
So to maintain a happy equilibrium, I do the cooking and she does the intelligence.
I sympathise intranetmania – my other half writes molecular modelling software for drug discovery companies (I think).