The MERGE.

A lifetime of fun! 

It's lunch break and I am ready. My OCD bug did not leave me overnight and my curiosity bug kicked in as well. 

Life gets busy and it is hard to put all of one kind of stuff in only one place, so this morning I started a game called MERGE.  

My living room is AHHHH! Well, if you ring the doorbell, you will think I have lost my mind!  I am actually enjoying the journey today, though enjoying does not really seem to be the word I am searching for. Let's say that I am not a ball of tears today.


Roger loved what he did for a career. It was more than a job to him. He could not have afforded to do it without the paycheck, but if he COULD have afforded that, he probably would have. As Karin said when we visited the Fire Station..."my Dad had the COOLEST job, ever!" 

I regret that I did not ask more questions. I said the same thing about my dad, and his dad regarding WWII.  I know a lot, but not nearly enough. Roger started his career at KSC with Apollo 15 - and enjoyed the STS (Shuttle Transport System) Era enormously! I believe he knew that thing inside and out and knew every building on the Space Center.  He could look at something and remember everything about it. Photographic memory, we called it.  FBI training, he called it. 

And yet, he acted like what he did and where he worked was just ordinary going to work kind of stuff. Well, no, it really wasn't. 

He loved history and politics too. I think he loved the excitement and the challenge of how to solve a really big problem if you had a really big 'incident' to command. And he cared a whole lot about  those who worked with and for him. He took their safety personally and would not expect them to take a risk he would not take. 

The only thing I ever saw that frustrated him was what he called "textbook officers'....meaning of course, that they thought they knew everything because they learned it in a book. He was Combat all the way, hands on, fully involved. 

Of course, I always had a fascination with the US Space Program as well. How could I NOT?  Because of that, his stuff is actually organized! I have spent the better part of my day refining that organization so that our children and grandchildren can better understand his world.  

I will forever enjoy the irony of Roger living in this high tech world with his hands-on, write it down,  TPA, AVO approach to his job. It's no wonder he made everyone laugh...and scratch their heads too, I'll bet! 

But his lesson, I think, would be to find a passion (people and fire trucks for instance) and then make it your career.  Surely he had stressful days, but mostly he had a whole lot of fun when he got into his older than dirt car and headed down that desolate road toward the coast. 

If you don't love your job today....MERGE something you do love into it! And be sure to love the people too!