I was (technically underneath) the WTC about 45 minutes before the planes hit, so my parents were quite legitimately freaking out that they couldn't get in touch with me. This sounds like a cliche, but in my lifetime New York has never been more resilient or supportive, as a city, than after that. It's gone back to indifference, but humanity was definitely affirmed in the wake.
Can I offer something in the same song, but more 'Murrica formatting? But today, I got to go pick up an SMP .308 and work on a client's house while his enormous mostly-wolf dog acts like a lap dog to me at every turn. It's cute and funny.
I had just started my freshman year in college. I had an 8 am class, and one of my friends was IMing me on AIM about the first plane. I had the same thought as some of y'all...that it was just an accident made by a small plane. No big deal. I went to class, and by the time I came out everything was different. We have a long oval at my campus with different buildings on each side. People had pulled TVs out onto the lawns so that we could watch updates about what was going on. There was a small crowd around each TV with people crying or trying to call their families. I don't really remember the rest of the day. I went to the rest of my classes, trying to hold on to some sense of familiarity and normalcy. What a horrible, awful day. I hope we never have another day like that. I still feel sick to my stomach when I stop and really think about it.
If my may start a gradual transition into a more typical drunk thread... I just heard about "The Teardrop Memorial" in NJ that was a gift from Putin. http://i.imgur.com/dKoVejN.jpg I know I'm not the first to point out that it looks like a vagina, but a lot of people seem to think it's coincidental. I don't think so. I think it's Putin putting on a masterclass troll lesson, calling Americans pussies in the aftermath of a huge national tragedy. Honestly, isn't that exactly the kind of thing he would do??
Wow, I knew I was Rush old but am I toytoy old? I was in my first year of graduate school and my girlfriend at the time was from New York and woke me up in a panic, I didn't have cable so I had to fight those bunny ears to get decent reception on my two inch TV. She was all panicked about people she knew. I don't think I even appreciated what was happening. I'm pretty sure we just had classes as usual
I was in fifth grade. I heard the first plane had crashed, from kids on the bus. Then we got to school. Teachers were crying, everyone just watched the TV's and the tragedy. It was a very somber situation.
Went to the 9/11 site year and a half ago. It was incredible. As soon as we got down there, it started to rain, which turned to snow. Really cold, nasty weather. My wife was 7 months pregnant and not feeling well, but was a trooper. The security was... I've never seen anything like it. At one point my wife asked a cop where the restroom was and the lady, realizing my wife was preggo, radioed ahead that there was a medical emergency. She had me chill out in the cozy security office while she escorted my wife to what I can only assume was an underground lair protected by lasers and dobermans. I always thought "looking down your nose" was a figure of speech until I got stared down by the hulks in that office. Once we got to the pools, it was surreal. There's simply no way to describe the feeling of standing where 2600 people died in a matter of minutes. I'm not religious or even spiritual, but I did feel something while I was there. I felt something as I ran my fingers over the engraved names surrounding the pools. I definitely felt something as I looked through the windows of the then-unfinished memorial museum and saw the same pieces of steel I saw on tv sticking out from the rubble. The cab ride back to the hotel was very quiet. Cock shit fuck tits cunt. BOOBS!!!!
My roommate kicked in my bedroom door to tell we the WTC was on fire. We got to the TV and the second plane hit. I didn't leave the room all day, it was a feeling of dark that cannot compare to anything else. The West was made truly vulnerable for the first time.
I was a young Lieutenant in training school in Texas; had a few free minutes so I went to get a cup of coffee and walked into the little cafe just in time to see the second plane hit on the TV. My class spent the rest of the day trying to figure out how we could convince the cadre to let us finish early and let us in the fight before it was over. Almost five years worth of deployed time later I sometimes wonder why we were in such a hurry. A close friend of mine who's from Long Island was deployed to Kosovo at the time. His older brother worked in tower 2. It wasn't until late in the day that he learned his brother was ok. Call it dumb luck or divine intervention; his brother was running late that morning due to his alarm not going off. He had just made it into the city and was walking to his tower when the second plane hit. He ended up walking north through most of Manhattan to an old girlfriend's office simply because he didn't know where else to go and the was the first place he could get to a phone and let his family know he was ok.
I grew up about an hour and a half outside of the city, but visited about once a month or so because my grandparents lived here (I was the first person not to grow up in the city since my family arrived in the U.S) and also my dad would always use any excuse to bring me here for a visit. I don't know what it was, but, when I was a little kid I could never recognize where I was. It was a longshot that I'd even recognize we were getting back to the town I'd lived in my whole life after spending the day the next town over. My dad would use the towers as cues. "Are we in the city?" "No, do you see the towers?" I began to be more comforted by the skyline with the towers than the site of my hometown because it was the only place I really recognized as home - the only place I recognized at all. I was twelve when it happened, and the word first went around the school as the towers had "fallen over." When I got home my dad was on the couch watching the news and crying and couldn't say much to me. He didn't say much to me for a long time after that. I felt really lost. A week later, my stepmom went to the hospital. She had been diagnosed with lung cancer a few months before. A week after that, she died. It was less than a year after they were married, and five years after my mom had died. She talked about the towers in the letter she wrote to me from the hospital to read after she died. They're completely linked to me. I can't grieve one without the other. In two weeks my entire world had fallen apart.
Had lunch beside Norm Macdonald yesterday. Turns out he was doing a show in town last night. Holy shit does he look rough. The only thing that we recognized was his voice. Otherwise, he looks ooooold. And he shakes. A lot. Had a pleasant conversation with him for a few minutes. Dude likes his hockey.
I was stationed in the middle east at the time. I joined in 99, and told my mom, "there's nothing to worry about. We're not even at war with anyone" I was scheduled to work that night but happened to come into base early. Ended up watching the second tower get hit in a room full of active duty deployed servicemen and women. That was a strange coupleweeks, as every American base went to max security posture, and those of us on the auxiliary security forces got activated to man the extra watches and positions. My best friend and I stood watch in a tower over the main gate at NSA Bahrain with M4A1s and Beretta M9s, talking about whether we could jump down and not die if a plane went to crash into the front gate. Nett, as far as celebrities go, I spent a good portion of the day and had dinner with Kurt Russell a couple weeks ago. His wine label is made through our small winery, and he and his son Wyatt came to help with bottling.
Test drove a 2012 Audi S5 today and I gotta admit it's a really nice ride. Was a great price too; if it wasn't for the fact that it was white and I hate white cars I would've given it some serious consideration despite the fact that I wasn't planning on buying a car until next year.
Sold a motorcycle today for a pretty good profit. I am going to miss that bike, but that new bathroom is not going to pay for itself. The problem going forward is the wife wanting me to get rid of most of my remaining five motorcycles. She has more home improvement projects ahead.