2 years since 9/11. Wow. Well, if I started writing about everything I felt that day I'd be up all night. Suffice it to say, It changed a lot about the way I see the world. For the first time ever I didn't feel safe in this country. Could have had something to do about living 2 minutes away from the world's biggest airport and a half-hour out from what I still consider to be the world's tallest building.

On that Tuesday morning I was in Mr. Qarmaza's web class. I got a page from Uncle Bruce that a plane had hit the WTC. I figured it was an accident. Something had happened to the Empire State Building (I think) a few decades back. I tried to reach cnn.com or any news site via the web in class and it was too clogged up to be useful. I later got a page that the second tower had been hit. After class I went to work, and while I was driving the first tower fell and there were reports of smoke near the Lincoln Memorial. With that, I decided to head for home instead. (Later, I found out this smoke was from the attack on the Pentagon.)

I made it home just in time to see the second tower fall on live TV. I woke up my Dad (working third shift at the time) and filled him in. I did make it to work that day, for a time. We were glued to the TV in the little sitting area in a hallway in Arlington Heights. On the way home there were HUGE lines at every gas station I passed. First and only time I've ever seen that.

I was supposed to leave for FL on September 13th...the day before Court's 27th birthday. The secretary of transportation shut down the airways for the next 3 days. I finally flew out of Midway on the 14th around 9pm...after having my flight pushed back a day and then sitting in Midway as my 1pm flight was cancelled due to some bomb threat there. After about 9 hours at the airport we finally left. One of the first flights to leave Chicago once they turned the skies back on. I *did* make it to Court's in time for her BD...Central time, anyway. It was already 1am in FL by the time I arrived.

Something I'll always remember...living at my Dad's, near an industrial park and close to O'hare by minutes, I was used to the CONSTANT sound of planes overhead, all day and night long. Not hearing that for the days that flights were cancelled...it was just...wrong. That's all I can say about it. I'll never forget the quiet.

God bless all the people who lost their lives that day...paricularly those that lost their lives in the line of duty, as many of NY's Finest and Bravest did that day. Also, to the men and women passengers that brought down the third plane in Pennsylvania...I can only hope I'd be as brave as you all were that day. God bless.