What other hobbies or interests do you have?

[bfalls]

I play serious Racquetball.
I've collect Coke memorabilia, mostly glassware, for over 35yrs.
ISF video certification.
I was an EMT for five years.
I'm an armchair lawyer. I love to watch the daily Judge shows on TV.

[Mash]

But this can be a great assist in getting you to retirement with full benes......

I was at aircraft engines when what ultimately became a two-year layoff had ended its first year, a layoff that resulted in two out of three employees being "gone". When business had recoverd two years afterward, employment had almost returned to its previous level, but not all of the previous employees were in a good place. I applied for a job in another division where they wanted an ME to handle aircooled generators. The hiring people were encouraged to talk to me.....

My first day on this new job, the generator "decider" told me that all 20 candidates for my position were simply outstanding, but that I was the only ME who knew EE. Each generator was to be shipped to its customer after I signed the work off, and I had to approve the work of EE designers and engineers as well as the ME people. So the two EE classes I took at university intended for ME's, plus the time I spent on tube amps, and building preamps, and so forth, really paid off. I must have spent about $20,000 on sound system equipment and related projects over the years, and I got at least 40X that amount back. And generator became fun....

I was called by a front-end (sales) guy on a Wednesday about how to get an order in South America that the competition had "no-bid". The problem was that the application required a generator that weighed 319,000 pounds, and that generator had to be moved over bridges that had a load limit of 200,000 pounds. I asked for a week to think about it, and then called Field Service that Friday morning to discuss an idea. They came to my office at 1 PM and after I presented my idea they said "no problem, you are asking for the back end of a field rewind and we do those all the time". When that first generator was ready to ship I was called and asked if I wanted to see it go. That model generator "always" shipped on a rail car but this one went out on a flatbed tractor trailor, followed by a second flatbed tractor trailor carrying its stator in a single wooden box. We shipped the generator without the 170,000 pound stator installed, so the generator then weighed only 150,000 pounds.

The generator "decider" stopped by my office one day and told me they were planning on switching me to hydrogen-cooled generators, but industrial gas turbines also wanted to talk to me. Was I interested? Well of course, because generator was in the cold north where the seasons were June, July, August, and winter. Gas turbine was in the sunny south.......

I went to the gas turbine interview in a large conference room, where some people sat at one end while I sat down by myself at the other end. Within a minute or two a man walked in and around behind me and then introduced himself as the gas turbine "decider". He gestured to a very preliminary drawing (a cartoon, in our parlance) on the table of the world's first 50 Hz steam-cooled gas turbine and asked me "Can you design that?" I looked at it and then answered "Yes, I can do that." "Excellent," he said. " I will talk to your management." A 5-second interview for a $1.9 billion project. And it was a great hobby. As was the follow-on 60 Hz steam-cooled gas turbine. These two machines demonstrated 60% efficiency, and then my next hobby was a 46% to 50% efficient simple-cycle plant that could be built in four months ....

There are many, many benefits to having your job be your hobby.