Small Talk: We'll Be Right Back

[peacheslatour]

11 minutes ago, andromeda331 said:

My family didn't realize my grandfather had Alzheimier's for awhile either. My grandmother had died and he took it really hard so we chalked a lot up to that. It hit him really hard and he always assumed she'd outlive him. He said it all the time. His wife just died, he hadn't lived alone in over fifty years, it was really easy to mistake a lot of it for grieving. It wasn't until a year and half later we realized there was a problem. Looking back we don't know when it really started it could have been before Grandma died and we just didn't know because everyone was focused on her because she was so sick that last year. 

Same here. My mom died in 2016 and we thought he was just devastated with grief. We slowly came to the realization that it was much more serious than that. It took us seemingly forever to get him to agree to be seen by a specialist and he ordered an MRI on his brain. Less than 5% hippocampus. Today we're going to tour a very upscale facility. Of course getting him in there is going to be another battle.

[WarnerCL45]

1 hour ago, LoneHaranguer said:

Shouldn't a little structural analysis, taking advantage of modern technology, eliminate any chance of a horrific result?

Rather than just grabbing the money, you mean?

[Brattinella]

3 hours ago, peacheslatour said:

Same here. My mom died in 2016 and we thought he was just devastated with grief. We slowly came to the realization that it was much more serious than that. It took us seemingly forever to get him to agree to be seen by a specialist and he ordered an MRI on his brain. Less than 5% hippocampus. Today we're going to tour a very upscale facility. Of course getting him in there is going to be another battle.

I am so sorry to hear about this. 

[chessiegal]

I don't see why people feel obligated to follow through on death bed wishes. I had an aunt who was from a Mennonite family, where the women didn't cut their hair. When her mother was on her death bed, she made her promise to never cut her hair, which she did. After her Mom died, she cut her hair. Nothing wrong with letting someone die in peace, and then doing whatever is best or practical. 

[smittykins]

So I wasn’t planning to adopt another cat right away, but Mom(who volunteers at the local animal shelter and lives next door)called me yesterday morning to say they had a young cat whom they thought was perfect for me.  She’s jet black, almost a year old according to her shot records, and super sweet, although I have to get used to a cat with claws again(China was declawed when I got her).  I was sitting on the throne when she tried to jump on my lap and gouged my leg.  The shelter called her Elvira, but I’m leaning towards Pepper.

So without further ado, my new House Panther!

[Annber03]

Aw, yay for a new pet :)! She certainly seems like a feisty little thing, hehe. I love how she blends into your black chair :p.

I like both possible names for her. Enjoy your new cat, and hope she settles in all right. 

[WarnerCL45]

Pretty cat!  

[Prevailing Wind]

YAYYYYY!!! Another shelter cat gets rescued!  And a BLACK one, at that. They're so hard to adopt out because people are, generally, stupid & superstitious.  SO happy for you that you're neither and now have a wonderful companion. I love my blackie, Bosco. You know what they say - If a black cat crosses your path, it means...the cat's going somewhere.

[peacheslatour]

All the black cats I've ever known are the sweetest, most loving cats out there.

[funky-rat]

21 hours ago, andromeda331 said:

My family didn't realize my grandfather had Alzheimier's for awhile either. My grandmother had died and he took it really hard so we chalked a lot up to that. It hit him really hard and he always assumed she'd outlive him. He said it all the time. His wife just died, he hadn't lived alone in over fifty years, it was really easy to mistake a lot of it for grieving. It wasn't until a year and half later we realized there was a problem. Looking back we don't know when it really started it could have been before Grandma died and we just didn't know because everyone was focused on her because she was so sick that last year. 

 

20 hours ago, peacheslatour said:

Same here. My mom died in 2016 and we thought he was just devastated with grief. We slowly came to the realization that it was much more serious than that. It took us seemingly forever to get him to agree to be seen by a specialist and he ordered an MRI on his brain. Less than 5% hippocampus. Today we're going to tour a very upscale facility. Of course getting him in there is going to be another battle.

Count me in that club.  Pappy died, and grammy started to get "odd" at times, but seemed generally OK.  It wasn't until we'd find her staring at the wall, and she'd say she was watching TV (but it was unplugged), that we started to put it all together.

[mmecorday]

Aw, funky-rat, it makes me smile that you called your grandfather Pappy. That's what we called ours too. How I miss my Nanny and Pappy!

Late to the party about the discussion of breakfast in bed, but my mother always told me that eating in bedrooms is what attracts mice. It's like she thought the mice on the street would gather together and say, "Hey, those people in that house there? They eat in their bedrooms! Let's invade!" I loved my mother, but she had some really bizarre ideas.

[Browncoat]

1 hour ago, mmecorday said:

I loved my mother, but she had some really bizarre ideas.

When I was learning to drive, my mother told me never to run over a cardboard box if there was one in the road because it might be full of kittens.

[riley702]

When I was a new driver, I straddled what looked like a pile of rags because I was afraid it contained a pop bottle or something, and as I drove over, ears popped up. It was two calico kittens, one long-haired and one short-haired. So hungry one started chewing on my finger. I stopped at a convenience store and bought cat food and took them home. I named them Frick and Frack.

[mmecorday]

The world needs more people like you, riley702! :)

[Browncoat]

2 hours ago, riley702 said:

When I was a new driver, I straddled what looked like a pile of rags because I was afraid it contained a pop bottle or something, and as I drove over, ears popped up. It was two calico kittens, one long-haired and one short-haired. So hungry one started chewing on my finger. I stopped at a convenience store and bought cat food and took them home. I named them Frick and Frack.

So my mother wasn't as crazy as I thought!  LOL

[smittykins]

 BTW, I’ve decided on Shadow for the official name of the House Panther.(Because she is.)

[chessiegal]

Re: packing. For the last three years we have gone to Europe for a month via the Queen Mary 2. We both take a carry on and personal bag, except for the crossing, where we take one garment bag for our formal wear. We ship the formal wear home when we disembark, and do just fine.

[Prevailing Wind]

I pack a lot because I do 2-week road trips in my car. Since I go in the summer, every day is a new outfit (mostly jeans on the bottom - and they're pretty bulky) since I do get sweaty in the summer heat. The "carry all" with my toiletries, etc., has enough room for tomorrow's outfit, so the only time I lug in the suitcase in is the day in the middle of the trip that's dedicated to laundry & re-packing. Still, I schlep an awful lot of stuff into the hotel room, including the picnic basket.

The one time I decided to leave the picnic basket in the car, the park ranger told me I'd better take it in. Even if it's only Nutella & Triscuits they smell, the bears will rip off my car door to get to it.  (I did think that was a bit dumb, as the lodge's room, on ground level, had a comparatively flimsy door - Bear could break into my room for Triscuits if he wanted them that badly.)

I'm not sure, after all these years of Road Tripping, I could whittle it all down to put in a carry-on bag.

[LoneHaranguer]

2 hours ago, Prevailing Wind said:

The one time I decided to leave the picnic basket in the car, the park ranger told me I'd better take it in. Even if it's only Nutella & Triscuits they smell, the bears will rip off my car door to get to it.  (I did think that was a bit dumb, as the lodge's room, on ground level, had a comparatively flimsy door - Bear could break into my room for Triscuits if he wanted them that badly.)

The idea may have been that you can't stop a bear from getting to the food, and a flimsy lodge door would be a lot cheaper to fix than the car.

[Browncoat]

Oh, yeah, if I'm on a road trip, I'll pack the car to the gills.  But if I have to fly somewhere, I'm a minimalist and will take as few things as possible.  I do always end up with at least two sets of shoes, though.

[Prevailing Wind]

3 hours ago, LoneHaranguer said:

The idea may have been that you can't stop a bear from getting to the food, and a flimsy lodge door would be a lot cheaper to fix than the car.

But then there's the huge wrongful death lawsuit my family would initiate.

[Bort]

I'm pretty sure the logic is that a bear will break into a darkened car if it smells food in there, but the lodge will have all its lights on and it won't venture near.

[LoneHaranguer]

37 minutes ago, Prevailing Wind said:

But then there's the huge wrongful death lawsuit my family would initiate.

You're going to get between a bear and food? Most people would bail out the back with the first bash at the door.  :)

[peacheslatour]

34 minutes ago, LoneHaranguer said:

You're going to get between a bear and food? Most people would bail out the back with the first bash at the door.  :)

This. I'm terrified of bears. I actually have nightmares about them.

[Prevailing Wind]

Like most hotel rooms, the lodge only had the front door. I would have had to run across the bear's path to get to the loo to lock myself in.

[fairffaxx]

4 hours ago, peacheslatour said:

This. I'm terrified of bears. I actually have nightmares about them.

Perfectly reasonable -- they're Godless killing machines, after all.

By:  S. Colbert

[Brattinella]

I remember when I was little, we used to go to Yosemite every summer.  We (my whole family, me included) would physically CHASE the bears away, yelling NO, BEAR!! 

 

It is really a wonder none of us ever got hurt.  That was the olden days when the bears were allowed to eat the garbage in the campgrounds.

Edited August 16, 2018 by Brattinella

[LoneHaranguer]

15 hours ago, Prevailing Wind said:

Like most hotel rooms, the lodge only had the front door. I would have had to run across the bear's path to get to the loo to lock myself in.

I'm fairly certain there are rules requiring a second way out in case of emergency, but I think they make it easy to satisfy the letter of the law while ignoring the spirit.

[bilgistic]

18 hours ago, Brattinella said:

I remember when I was little, we used to go to Yosemite every summer.  We (my whole family, me included) would physically CHASE the bears away, yelling NO, BEAR!! 

 

It is really a wonder none of us ever got hurt.  That was the olden days when the bears were allowed to eat the garbage in the campgrounds.

They were only coming after your pic-a-nic basket.

[janie jones]

8 hours ago, LoneHaranguer said:

I'm fairly certain there are rules requiring a second way out in case of emergency, but I think they make it easy to satisfy the letter of the law while ignoring the spirit.

Well, the window is the second egress, and I'm 99% sure that's all any law expects.  But when the bear comes busting down your door, you're probably not going to have the presence of mind to figure out the window. 

[Prevailing Wind]

It's a rare hotel room that has a second door.

[mojoween]

On 8/11/2018 at 8:09 AM, smittykins said:

 BTW, I’ve decided on Shadow for the official name of the House Panther.(Because she is.)

Aww I was rooting for Pepper, but that’s my own personal bias because Pepper Johnson is my favorite football player of all time.

When I think of a carryon bag, I think of the small bag I have that fits an iPad, a book, water and a snack.  Is that what you’re all talking about when saying you can travel for a week with a carryon?  Or do you mean you just have one suitcase that you put in the overhead?

[chessiegal]

When I say carry on I mean a roller suitcase that can fit in an overhead bin on an airplane. On our last three month long trips to Europe, we've each taken 1 roller suitcase and 1 bag that fits my Surface Pro, iPad, snacks, etc. We do wash at least twice. The Queen Mary 2 has free laundromats we use before we get to destination, and laundromats are easy to find in all the places we've visited. Of course, we visited England, France, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, places with amenities similar to the US.

[Browncoat]

Carry-on to me is the bag that goes in the overhead bin.  The bag that fits the iPad, binoculars, snacks, passport, etc. is the personal bag, and goes under the seat in front of me.  And when I travel for a week or more with just the carry-on and personal bag, I do wear clothes more than once (except underwear -- those are either ratty ones that get worn once and thrown out, or they're ones I can easily wash out in the sink and hang to dry overnight), but never two days in a row.  Well, never say never -- the last time I went to Scotland, I made the mistake of only taking one sweater, and I wore that every day except about four hours one afternoon.  It was cool and rainy that whole trip!

[Bastet]

7 hours ago, mojoween said:

When I think of a carryon bag, I think of the small bag I have that fits an iPad, a book, water and a snack.  Is that what you’re all talking about when saying you can travel for a week with a carryon?  Or do you mean you just have one suitcase that you put in the overhead?

The roller suitcase that fits in the overhead bin.  That plus a purse (or sometimes a messenger bag) is all I take, so it's really easy to get around.

[Prevailing Wind]

One my co-workers just bought some underpants for her mom - they're going on a Rick Steves tour in Europe, so she bought her mom undies that dry almost instantly.

[mmecorday]

Quote

I could look at Clydesdales all day long.  I just saw a video with Shire Horses, I think they are a variant of Clydesdales.  The female was dying of colic, and the male rushed to her side (10 years together) and he kept biting her neck and tugging on her mane until she got up.  They were minutes away from putting her down!  I cried like a baby, he saved her!  Beatrice and Beau.

Seven months late to the party, but wanted to say that I hate Bud/love the Clydesdales . . . and they came to our town last March to appear in the annual week-after-St. Patrick's Day Irish Parade! They stayed at the Seaport Museum (one of our major local attractions), where a fancy, portable stable was set up for them. They had visiting hours when you could go in and I got a nice photo of my kids with them. Beautiful, immaculately groomed, and very chill animals. They look even better in person and seem to know it. :)

I live in Virginia and I love to go to Busch Gardens just to see the Clydesdales! A few years ago I went to St. Louis and toured the Anheiser-Busch Brewery (I highly recommend this, by the way) and got to see the Clydesdales in their natural habitat. Their stables are amazing -- climate controlled and outfitted with stained glass windows. They are very docile animals and don't seem to mind tourists taking photos with them. They shared their space with a very high-spirited Dalmatian who was very friendly and wanted everyone to pet him. I didn't have a good camera then, so my pictures weren't the best. But here's a shot of the stained glass windows in the stables.

[Brookside]

On 8/20/2018 at 8:41 AM, chessiegal said:

When I say carry on I mean a roller suitcase that can fit in an overhead bin on an airplane. On our last three month long trips to Europe, we've each taken 1 roller suitcase and 1 bag that fits my Surface Pro, iPad, snacks, etc. We do wash at least twice. The Queen Mary 2 has free laundromats we use before we get to destination, and laundromats are easy to find in all the places we've visited. Of course, we visited England, France, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, places with amenities similar to the US.

I'm sure your fellow travelers are grateful. 

(Just being silly, but at first I read this as you and your partner just wash/bath twice on a three month trip!)

Edited September 5, 2018 by Brookside
Grammar

[chessiegal]

Hah! I guess saying we do laundry at least twice would have been clearer. In our house we call doing laundry "doing the wash". And my wonderful husband does it. I have a picture of my husband in a laundromat in France wearing his tuxedo shirt because he was washing all his other shirts. ;-]

[friendperidot]

Such a sad day, I can't watch any news. But it was 17 years ago today, that I found Television Without Pity and made my first post on the commercial thread. It had been such a horrible day, wasn't allowed to have the news on at work that day because I worked at a psych hospital for children and adolescents. I did not work directly with them, and patients were never in our office, but we were ordered to keep it from the patients. Of course, we sneaked the news on occasionally for updates all day. When I got home, I was glued to the tv. I had dial up internet and spent the evening watching the news and surfing. And then I discovered the Commercial Thread. I felt like I was home. I made a post, something sarcastic but later, I felt terrible about making that post on such a terrible day. I'm not an unfeeling person, I just needed a break for a little while. I thank you all for all your remarks and kindness and snark and sarcasm through the past 17 years. And I really wish I didn't have such an awful day to have to remember.

[Brattinella]

@friendperidot , I am so glad you found your way to TwoP, and thence here.  You have always been such a calming and sweet force, and I am proud to call you friend. :)

[funky-rat]

12 hours ago, friendperidot said:

Such a sad day, I can't watch any news. But it was 17 years ago today, that I found Television Without Pity and made my first post on the commercial thread. It had been such a horrible day, wasn't allowed to have the news on at work that day because I worked at a psych hospital for children and adolescents. I did not work directly with them, and patients were never in our office, but we were ordered to keep it from the patients. Of course, we sneaked the news on occasionally for updates all day. When I got home, I was glued to the tv. I had dial up internet and spent the evening watching the news and surfing. And then I discovered the Commercial Thread. I felt like I was home. I made a post, something sarcastic but later, I felt terrible about making that post on such a terrible day. I'm not an unfeeling person, I just needed a break for a little while. I thank you all for all your remarks and kindness and snark and sarcasm through the past 17 years. And I really wish I didn't have such an awful day to have to remember.

We had the radio on at work (my prior job) and all the mis-information coming through was staggering.  None of our computers at work were able to connect to the internet, and cell phones weren't smart phones then.  We only had one TV - up on the 2nd floor in the conference room.  We weren't allowed to watch it either, but they did allow 2 of my co-workers - one who had a brother who was NYPD and she wasn't sure if he was there, and another who had a brother who worked in One World Trade Center (both were fine, but it took 2 days for them to find out).  Our boss had been in the Navy long-term, and she had people she could call, and did, and that helped cut down on the mess of info, but I made the mistake of going home on my lunch break to watch TV and told my co-workers I would bring back info.  I hadn't seen any visuals by that time, and I wasn't prepared for what I saw.   I immediately turned to the one of the NYC stations we get.  Their transmitter was on top of the WTC, and it showed an eerie static image of one of the towers on fire - when the first tower collapsed, their transmission froze.  It was like that for some time and it really creeped me out.  I flipped channels, overwhelmed by what I saw, and I instinctively called my mom at work.  I was having a full-on panic attack.  While she was trying to calm me down, I saw the first images of jumpers, people hanging out of windows, etc.  I freaked out big-time, and I will never forget my mom saying "Calm down.  That footage is hours old.  Those people have all gone on to Heaven.  There's nothing you can do or your could do to save them".  (not trying to push any religion - just making a comment)  When my husband got home from work, I told him "No more TV for me".  I got on a forum that I used to belong to that folded years ago.  There were some trolls on there in full force, and I just decided to veg for a few days to clear my head.

[Browncoat]

I still can't watch the images from that day.

[funky-rat]

8 minutes ago, Browncoat said:

I still can't watch the images from that day.

My husband couldn't, up until 2 years ago.  He watched some of the documentaries about it, and he said they answered some questions and actually calmed his mind a bit.

[bilgistic]

I was out of work (act surprised) and my best friend at the time called and woke me up sometime just after the first plane had hit. I turned on the TV and watched all day; like so many people, I watched live as the second plane hit the second tower. It was like watching on live TV in elementary school when the Challenger exploded in flight.

I was dating a guy who worked downtown here in Charlotte at Bank of America, which was letting everyone go home. No one really knew what was happening. There was so much information and misinformation and fear. I begged him to come to my place because it was closer to his workplace than his home was. There was talk of terrorists blocking the streets in major cities; it was just chaos.

When I was 22 (four to five years prior), I dated a guy who lived on Long Island. We'd kept in touch, and I knew he worked in the financial district, so I was worried about him. I got in touch with a while later and he told me how surreal it all was. I'd spent a lot of time in the city when I dated him; I'd go up on weekends and school breaks. Even as removed as I was from NYC, it was weird for me to see places I knew and visited being reduced to ash.

I exhausted myself watching the TV coverage and weeping. I was so heartened, though, by seeing the best of humanity emerge from the absolute worst actions of humanity. The way people came together and cared for one another was incredible.

I was working again several months later and there was a first-anniversary vigil at a downtown park. People all stood together and wept during the silence.

But now, on the tribute posts on Instagram, people make the vilest comments. I know those people don't represent the majority, but they sure are the loudest. It's hard to remember that prevailing caring spirit we once had for each other.

[Bastet]

I was lucky in that I was a few days into a week-long hiking trip (hiking all day, but back in civilization each night).  By the time we woke up and turned on the news while getting ready that morning, everything had already happened (we were in the Mountain time zone).  Which was shocking - it really took several minutes of staring at the screen and staring at each other to comprehend this was real - but we hadn't sat watching everything play out in real time.  Of course we read the paper each morning and watched the news each night as usual as that week went on, but during the day we were out in beautiful nature, and it really helped.

The wife of an executive where I worked at the time died on one of the flights, and when I came back to work I had this shell-shocked man in my office wanting to change all his beneficiary paperwork so that if something happened to him, her kids would get it all with no hassle.  This guy was a total asshole at work, and she was nice, smart, had her own career, had raised two daughters (whom he adored), etc.  She was his "human credential" -- there had to be something more to him than what we all saw at work if he'd managed to score and maintain this great little family.  I left the company the next spring, and left the industry entirely, so I never heard about him anymore and don't know how much he changed after her death.  But I'll never forget the way he looked in my office.

[Annber03]

Somebody was commenting the other day on the new generation of kids out there who were either too young to remember 9/11 or not yet born yet. On the one hand, it's hard to believe it's been 17 years, but on the other hand, when you consider that fact, it does feel like it should be longer ago. 

I was in 11th grade then. Classes hadn't officially started for the day yet, but I got to school a little after 8 that morning and was hanging out in my math class (I did that often, because it was a nice little extra study hall of sorts if I needed to finish up some homework or if I needed help with some math stuff, and if I didn't have any of that, sometimes I'd hang out there just 'cause my teacher liked to have the radio on or play music on the computer and it was a good way to kill time). Shortly afterward, some of my classmates started coming into the room and were talking about a plane hitting the WTC. My school choir had been to New York City in April 2001, and I remember taking photos of the towers* and seeing them so prominently wherever we went, so that added to my shock. I'd thought it was just some kind of freak accident at first-those towers were quite tall, so who knows what could happen with a plane flying past buildings like that. 

*(A lot of those pictures from our trip wound up in our 10th grade yearbooks. Really eerie looking through those yearbooks afterward.) 

Then more kids started coming in, and soon they were talking about a second plane hitting the towers. Obviously at that point I knew it couldn't be a freak accident, but for some reason, the idea of it being terrorism didn't cross my mind. And nobody else was talking about the situation in terms of terrorism, either. Everyone was just confused and trying to figure out the exact details more than anything else. 

At 9 am the principal came on the intercom and said, "Well, I guess you've all heard about what's happened" and told the teachers to turn on either their radios or their TVs. My teacher turned on the radio, and that's when I finally properly heard what was going on, and I remember staring at the radio like, "...what?" It wasn't until I went to my second class, though, that I saw any footage of what had happened, and by then, I think the towers had fallen and they were replaying the footage, and I just remember seeing scenes of people running around and dust everywhere. 

And that's how we spent the entire day. We just went from class to class either listening to or watching the news. Then we got to go outside for gym class that day-we'd had a walk in a little path near the school planned days beforehand-and during that walk, a lady who saw us passing by came outside and told us that Bush had been sent to the Omaha base. I live in Iowa, and the town I lived in at the time, it was just a few short hours' drive to Omaha from there. So that's when the fear really fully set in for me and I was thinking, "...okay, so what the hell does that mean, then?" I was so happy to get home that night and be with my family, and remember watching the news for a few days afterward. 

(I also remember, during that walk, looking up at the beautiful blue sky and the sun shining and feeling like there should be dark clouds rolling in and the ground opening up or something. It just felt so weird to have such a gorgeous day while all this chaos was going on.)

3 hours ago, Browncoat said:

I still can't watch the images from that day.

The only time I've seen any images from that day is if they happen to pop up in some retrospective about the early 2000s or something of that sort. Unfortunately, the most common images those kinds of shows tend to show are of the planes hitting the towers and the towers collapsing. It's tough to watch for somebody like me, who wasn't anywhere near the eastern U.S. that day and didn't know anyone who was in any of those buildings or planes. I can't even begin to imagine how hard it would be for people who were more directly affected. 

48 minutes ago, bilgistic said:

I exhausted myself watching the TV coverage and weeping. I was so heartened, though, by seeing the best of humanity emerge from the absolute worst actions of humanity. The way people came together and cared for one another was incredible.

I was working again several months later and there was a first-anniversary vigil at a downtown park. People all stood together and wept during the silence.

But now, on the tribute posts on Instagram, people make the vilest comments. I know those people don't represent the majority, but they sure are the loudest. It's hard to remember that prevailing caring spirit we once had for each other.

I think about that a lot, too. I remember so many great stories of help and aid from that time period-it's very easy to look at that and then look at the more nasty stuff that people said and did as time went on and wonder what the hell happened. I do try and keep those kinds of positive stories in mind, though, on days when my faith in humanity is shaken. 

Edited September 12, 2018 by Annber03

[friendperidot]

On a much different note, I got news today that my broken foot is healing nicely and I will not need surgery and I can quit the boot! Felt like the weight of the world was lifted!

[Prevailing Wind]

I have visited the memorial for flight 93 in Shanksburg, PA. I've been there twice; they're doing a fine job. I don't think they're done yet - they keep adding stuff. When it's finally finished, I may go again, as I don't stay long when I'm there. I get too emotional reading all the stuff. They've got a memorial wall with all the names of passengers/crew carved in it. They don't separate crew from pax; they're all one. One woman also has "unborn child" underneath her name.

But the visitors! There are SO many of them and they, each and every one, are SO respectful. None of that loutish behavior we've come to expect from a few people. There's not even any littering! One more time, it makes me proud of Americans and what we can be when we set aside our differences.

[Moose135]

I was working at the major newspaper on Long Island on 9/11.  I saw a story pop up on our internet site about a small plane hitting one of the towers.  I turned to tell a coworker, and she was just getting off the phone with her husband, who worked in another department, who told her about the second plane.  We went down the hall to a manager's office where I knew there was a television, and watched the events unfold.  There wasn't much else for us to do in the advertising department that day but follow the news and offer assistance to the Editorial side, as those folks were flying into action.  When I got home that evening, I was outside talking with the neighbor, and I hear aircraft overhead - unexpected, as they had grounded all flights.  I looked up to see 2 F-16 fighters circling.  I think that's when it really hit me, when I saw the Air Force flying Combat Air Patrol missions over New York.

I had never visited the World Trade Center, even though I lived on Long Island most of my life to that point.  A lot of locals are like that, you take things for granted.  For several years, I had been attending a software users group meeting in lower Manhattan every 6 to 8 weeks.  Many of the members were NYC government workers, and one of their offices hosted our meetings.  In May 2001, I left a meeting - it was a beautiful spring day, blue skies, gentle breeze, warm temperatures.  I thought I would take a run down to the WTC, as it was only about 6 blocks away.  I decided not to - I didn't have my camera, and I could catch an earlier train back to the Island.  I decided I would bring my camera to the next group meeting, and visit then.  I swear to God, I thought "It's not like they're going anywhere."  Our next meeting was scheduled for September 13...