"Yeah, I was a surveyor for awhile, lotta outdoor work, lotta driving a truck down crappy roads, it can get brutal in the summer sometimes. Oklahoma." And that's if your equally crappy truck's AC didn't break down for the umpteenth time.

"Thanks, man," a bright grin. "It's fun, though--especially if you find something nobody's ever managed to translate before? Doesn't happen too often. I got about half of it down already. This is actually a form of Sumerian cuneiform, but reserved only for ancient magic spells. So thing is, gotta translate it, and not accidentally read it out loud and cause a minor apocalypse or something." That could either be a joke, or a thing that happens in his life. Or both.