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.

Do you already have plans for later? Any other parts of Europe you wanna visit?

Everywhere! Um. Dublin's gotten a lot more cheap flights to parts of Europe since I last was here, so I'm spoiled for choice and don't know where to go. I want to go to Greece, and Spain and Portugal. And back to Rome. But, I don't know. we'll see. I probably can't plan anything before October, anyway.

Five years ago, it was the second week of my senior year of high school, and I was sitting in homeroom staring blankly at the board wishing I was anywhere else. It was about six weeks before I really found online community fandom, at least four months before I was directed to our old WX hangout. We had just finished watching Channel One, the little news program that's sent out to lots of high schools in the country. It had turned off, and then suddenly it came back on, and it was the news; we saw the smoke coming from the first tower, and no one knew what was going on. And I watched, horrified and mouth gaping, for hours while the school board tried to decide what to do, when the second plane hit.

Mostly I remember the wall color of that room, a deep rust-coloured red, dark and forboding, and unpleasantly appropriate for the mood pervading the country.

And really, aren't there times when we all really need zebra footage?

I can't help having yet another grim chuckle:

I'm re-reading the 9/11/01 WX Natter thread, and, about 5:30 in the afternoon (Eastern time), Amy Parker posted that crude oil prices had "jumped"....

....to $31/barrel.

Heh. $31. The good ol' days.

It's become one of my most oft-used mantras, Fred. It just kind of says everything, you know?

Man, I'd forgotten how perfect that whole grid was. From the archives.

DH was out of town. In Reno - with a bunch of front line first responders form MTA, arlington, NYC ,etc. I was home, the day was sunny. I turned on the tv - and thought what I was seeing was old footage of the bombing of the Towers - ( when they guy drove the truck in). Didn't know why they were showing that. Then I realized what was happening and Called Matt. and made him turn on a TV. He has never been a big tv person. he spent the next 3 days drinking and crying with frantic police and fireman. I had you guys.

That Onion thing is awesome.

My illicit cable was shut off that weekend before, so I basically had no TV for weeks, which was just as well. Except for the fact that I missed the finale of Big Brother, but I think so did everyone else? I forget.

What cracked me up most when I read this the first time is Nickelodeon: SpongeJohn SquareAshcroft