IF YOU WROTE A BOOK ABOUT YOUR LIFE WOULD ANYONE READ IT?

For obvious reasons today has been a strange day. For me it started last night. I've been having trouble sleeping for probably the past year or so. Every once in a while when I think that my body is about to get sick from the lack of sleep I take one sleeping pill. I took it last night and slept the way I usually do which pissed me off. But I went back to sleep about 5 and woke up about 9 when JAB left to go to work. I do what I usually do and turned on the radio which is set to talk radio. For a second I was confused because I thought it was Friday and the normal people weren't on the radio. Then I heard the news about the shuttle.

I'm not sure if I'm like everyone else but the whole day they've been in my thoughts. The problem was that I couldn't stay awake, so I dozed off and on until 10, each time waking up and hoping that I had dreamed the whole thing. But I didn't. The whole day I've been taking little cat naps, for 20 minutes to an hour. Each time I woke up I would go back to the reality of life. Bad things happen. While watching the coverage today a commercial came on. I don't remember who it was for but the begining starts by asking "If you wrote a book about your life would anyone read it?" I don't know why that was so profound to me but I started thinking and something shook me and took me back to 16 days ago.

That morning I was layovering in Ft. Myers Florida. The night before we came in and the pilots mentioned someting about the launch was going to be the next day and that we would probably be able to see it from the hotel. I didn't think anything about because like a lot of people in American it's just another day. The Shuttle takes off and does what it has to do and then lands. That morning I woke up and listened to CNN talk about the security that was going on at the launch because of the Isreali, Ilan Ramon. I have always been facanated about Isreal and the Isreali people, so I kinda paid close attention. They announced that the the launch was going to happen in about 20 minutes. I thought about getting up and going outside to see it since I'd never seen a launch before. But I talked myself out of it. "why get up and get dressed just to see a plum so smoke?" I talked myself out of it and turned on one of those Court shows.

I made one of the biggest mistakes of my life. I should have gotten my ass out of bed to see the launch. Someone of my crew saw it and said that it was so great. I felt bad then when I didn't see it but now I feel stupid. I missed a part of history because I didn't want to get out of my bed.

I do that a lot in my life. I just life an ordinary life and I seem ok with it. I can't live this life anymore. Even though I feel so bad for the 7 people who died on the shuttle for some reason I had some joy. Even though I didn't know them, I feel like they died doing something that they loved. Bad things happen to people everyday in cars, planes, whatever. But in the end can people really say that they died doing what they were supposed to do.

I can say that if a book comes out on anyone one of those 7 people I'd want to read it. Not because they died on February 1 2003 but because they followed a dream and a goal.

God bless the and their family and may their deaths help us to get off our asses and live a life worth reading about.

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