9/11

I've been saying for days now that I'm not ready for the 9/11 anniversary. Its hard to believe its already been 10 years. I remember that day so clearly and I imagine I always will.

The coverage is hard to watch, especially when they caught on video the second plane flying into the World Trade Center when we still weren't quite sure what had happened to the first tower. I found this short video online and think its a good brief summary of what happened, and shows me coverage in a way I didn't see that day since all morning I was at work trying to get to news sites online to find out what was happening - they were all overloaded with people and so we mostly heard radio coverage.

Its strange to see what news was covering BEFORE the attacks - it was a different world in a span of a few hours.

That morning, I walked into work to hear a woman I worked with, Mary, say that a plane flew into the WTC, I thought it was a prop plane or something like that and really didn't understand until I found more information - we had the radio on and tried to get online (unsuccessfully). It was unreal and we were scared because we weren't sure how many planes there could be and there were thoughts they could have other targets - including downtown Houston. Eventually work closed for the day. I didn't want to go home - I lived alone at the time - so a coworker, Jason, and I stayed together for part of the afternoon.

We didn't know what to do, so we tried to do 'normal' things. I'd had a flat tire the day before and we left my car at a shop to get the tire replaced and went to get something to eat. At lunch, I remember how surreal it was to look up at the sky, it was such a gorgeous day - cloudless, beautiful blue - it was hard to believe that under that same sky something so horrible had happened.

Eventually I did go home and watched coverage the rest of the day, tears streaming down my face. It was hard to watch but we had to to try to understand what had happened.

Kevin heard the news from a radio host, they were in the middle of an interview with Dom Capers (head coach for the Texans at the time) and she had CNN on in the background. He watched the coverage from work on tvs without sound.

Our world has never been the same, and there were days when we wished we could go back to worrying about Britney Spears and the other meaningless news we'd worried about before that day. We can't and we won't, but we'll never forget those who did that way, including so many people who were going for a regular day at work or flying cross-country.

When Kevin and I went to NYC a few years ago we went to see Ground Zero, we couldn't really see too much - its a construction zone for the memorial now, but we wanted to see it....