Monday, September 11, 2006


9/11 + 5


When I got into work on September 11th, 2001, I had two things on my mind. What was the weather forecast for that Saturday, and what time was my Alma Mater's football game with the University of Toledo to start.

The plan was to go on a river clean-up with the local Sierra Club, maybe order a pizza, pick up a case of "lager" (Yuengling to you non-locals) and either order the game on PPV or patch my computer into the audio feed.

That all changed when a co-worker announced that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. Now I've flown outta JFK and knew that the Towers were along the flight paths, so this was possible. When the second one hit, I figured something was up. The strike on the Pentagon and the plane crashing in Somerset PA made me realize that something serious has happened.

At 12PM, we were all ordered to leave the building and return home. This I did. Upon my return home the first thing I did was turn on the TV to deal what would be 4 days of "wall-to-wall" coverage, and then sent out an e-mail to several people on my e-mail list to make sure they were OK. I also called my house.

When I went to bed that night, all I could think of was an old Chinese Curse--"May you live in interesting times". And things were about to get very interesting. . .