Close - it was Morgan and Wong. Their leaving is when the wheels started coming off the X-Files

Midway through season 2?!

Salon Olbermann interview: [link]

When asked if he was "courting liberals":

You know, every once in a while you should bring the flag out and say, "What does our country stand for?" The first thing that I think of is the statement that I disagree with your beliefs, but I will fight to the death for your right to express them. When the secretary of defense and the president of the United States make statements that indicate those statements are no longer operative, then you have to say something. It's no longer liberal versus conservative at that point. It's American versus truly un-American. So I'm not courting anybody with these things, I'm saying these things because I think they need to be said. I think they need to be underlined and underscored in the public discourse.

eta: On the media focusing on the Lewinsky scandal:

This is, what we're going through now, monumentally more important. Monica Lewinsky, and the events surrounding Monica Lewinsky, will get a paragraph, perhaps, in the history books. This era gets its own chapter, at least, and in the history of this country it may be as pivotal as the time of the Civil War. There has never been, I think, since then any kind of comparable political struggle going on over what we are, and what we represent, and what our standards have to be whether we are under attack or we are not.

Midway through season 2?!

It was that early? Huh, I could have sworn they were around the X-Files longer than that. I know they were on the first two seasons of Millenium. Was that before or after SPACE: A&B?

I just choked on air and now have to be careful how I blink so as not to smear mascara everywhere from the resulting coughing fit.

I really shouldn't be allowed to call myself a grownup. Or maybe even human.

They left in S2 after Die Hand Die Verlezt to do Space, then returned in a more limited capacity in S4.

"tasty treats for first responders."

::loves Ginger::

I second that.

on the most heartbreakingly beautiful fall day

That's what strikes me. It started out as a perfect late-summer, early-fall day. I was looking forward to a light day at the office because I'd just finished a major project on the Friday before. I mean, the big thing oin my agenda was faxing a letter on a personal matter.

Then the guy in the office across from me asked me if I'd heard about a plane flying into the WTC. By then, CNN's Web site wasn't letting anyone in, so I checked out the BBC. Which had the story, complete with pictures. And suddenly I'm passing word on to all the New Yorkers (as in, native or had lived there) around.

Around 9:30 or 9:45, someone else pointed out a smoke cloud in the distance. So a group of us gathered in a conference room not 50 feet from where my office then was to see what was going on. My thought was that the Pentagon was in that direction.

Then my phone rang. It was Hubs, asking if I'd heard. And that was when I started hearing the wild rumors on my radio. I told Hubs about them, and he started telling his office.

Then someone grabbed the phone from Hubs. Apparently, the lines to the outside from his office weren't working. (Near as I can figure, he reached me through the interoffice phone system -- at the time, we worked for different bureaus of the same Department.) And this strange voice is asking how I know what's happening.

Just at that moment, a voice came over the intercom saying that the government was shutting down for the day. (Some people had already left. A colleague would later tell me of hearing that a bomb had toppled the Washington Monument. Just as she was passing same.) People thought I was crazy to take Metro because -- what if they hit Metro? (My response -- what if they hit the bridges?) (It wasn't a morning for the sane.) The last thing I heard before shutting off the radio -- a plane was circling over the Capitol. (Just what I needed to hear, working about 5 blocks from that building.)

So I walked over to the next Metro station. Luckily, trains were still running ok. Hubs even caught the same train. But it ended up being a very, very crowded train. Yet everyone was in surprisingly good humor.

We got home about 11:30, 11:45. I started calling people while Hubs turned on the TV -- just in time to watch footage of the Towers falling.

We took our sandwiches to a nearby park for lunch. Where we ran into another colleague of mine, who (with her husband) had decided to bring her 2 preschool-age children there to play.

Later in the afternoon, we drove out Route 50 past Chantilly -- I don't remember why, probably to get out of the house and fill the gas tank. For those of you who don't know the area, planes landing at Dulles Airport fly over that stretch of highway. At any given time, you can usually see a couple of planes in the area. But not that day. Absolutely clear sky.

When we got back home, Hubs went back to the news reports. I couldn't deal any more, so I went to the computer, where I'd been lurking on several boards (including the Buffistas) for some time. And I started posting. And I haven't stopped since.

A friend, who was a newspaper reporter at the time, called me from 17th street downtown. As close to the White House as you can drive. She said that she'd heard a rumor that a plane was headed for the White House (United 93, it came to pass) and she wanted to watch.

I nearly screamed myself hoarse admonishing her to get the hell out of downtown. She kept saying 'this will make my career'. I suppose I get that kind of ambition,/momentary insanity, but I could never really look at her the same after that.

IIRC, Animal Planet was also showing a bunch of documentaries about cute fluffy animals not meeting gruesome ends.

The Buffistas had long since coalesced as an important community-in-my-life by that point, but I can certainly understand why that day was a watershed in community cohesion for a bunch of yous.

IIRC, Animal Planet was also showing a bunch of documentaries about cute fluffy animals not meeting gruesome ends.

Or, as the Onion brilliantly put it, Fuck everything, here's some zebra footage.