9/11/11

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I'll be turning my TV off now, until September 12th.

[Ian]

But you'll miss all those wonderfully absorbing "where were you on 9/11" stories. Like the kind we could have here.

I was onboard USS Gonzalez, docked in Plymouth UK, waiting for the day's work to be done so I could take an overnight trip to London...

[Gawdzilla Sama]

But you'll miss all those wonderfully absorbing "where were you on 9/11" stories. Like the kind we could have here.

I was onboard USS Gonzalez, docked in Plymouth UK, waiting for the day's work to be done so I could take an overnight trip to London...

Did you get your trip?

[Ian]

But you'll miss all those wonderfully absorbing "where were you on 9/11" stories. Like the kind we could have here.

I was onboard USS Gonzalez, docked in Plymouth UK, waiting for the day's work to be done so I could take an overnight trip to London...

Did you get your trip?

No, and I was sore about it for nine and a half years. Right up until bin Laden had his brains blown out. Serves him right for screwing around with a strapping young Ensign's trip to London.

[Feck]

I was asleep on my sofa after a night of mushrooms and horror movies BBC News was surreal to wake up to .

[Gawdzilla Sama]

But you'll miss all those wonderfully absorbing "where were you on 9/11" stories. Like the kind we could have here.

I was onboard USS Gonzalez, docked in Plymouth UK, waiting for the day's work to be done so I could take an overnight trip to London...

Did you get your trip?

No, and I was sore about it for nine and a half years. Right up until bin Laden had his brains blown out. Serves him right for screwing around with a strapping young Ensign's trip to London.

That'll teach him to dick with a TLA, won't it.

@Feck: So, just another morning after the night before for you then?

[Robert_S]

I was in a quiet little mountain town 17 miles from Boulder, Colorado. I saw the news and went out to the coffee shop to be around other people.

I actually had to break the news to about 20 people who were enjoying a beautiful morning.

[Twoflower]

I was trying to figure out a way to get out of an English test I hadn't studied for. Thanks Bin Laden!

[Cormac]

I was in the headquarters of the management consulting firm I used to work for back then, watching the entire thing unfold on a large flat-screen tv. Agog, as were we all.

Like everyone else, I spent the day emailing and texting family and pals in the US who might have been working in the area to make sure they were ok.

[Cormac]

But I shall also be switching off every time the topic apears on television.

[FBM]

It was evening over here. I was on my way out the door to go drinking with friends. I flipped the channel to CNN, intending to turn the TV off afterwards. The first tower was on fire and it took me a minute to figure out it was for real. Didn't out drinking after all. (Bought beer and drank in. )

[Thinking Aloud]

I was in my "office", i.e. the other end of the kitchen at our old house. The phone rang late afternoon (UK time), and it was my mum. I think she was calling for something else, but said, "Have you seen the news? They're blowing up America." I switched it on and watched for probably an hour or more. It was quite surreal and unsettling even from this relative distance and detachment.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I was at work double checking a data base that had been installed at Purdue. My "office" was the conference room. The boss came trotting in and turned the TV on and we watched the second impact. For the rest of the day they had me taking notes as news items popped up. First time I got paid for watching TV. Being the only veteran in the building I got a lot of questions, most of which I couldn't or wouldn't answer. I think my most important contribution that day was to keep reminding people that West Lafayette, Indiana would not be high on any terrorist "hit list" that I knew of.

[Atheist-Lite]

I was meddling flippantly with the remote control and caught it live moments after it had happened, on CNN. I couldn't figure out what was going on at first. Then the second plane hit live in front of my eyes on TV. That's partly why I leave the remote control for my wife to handle these days. You never know what your gonna get?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Big landmarks in our lives like this stick out, of course.

In Nov. 1963 I was in the seventh grade, in a small rural school outside a small town in Indiana. We got consecutive announcement that the President had been shot, that he was undergoing treatment and then that he had died. The buses were there before the third announcement and we all went home. This was just before Thanksgiving, and while we had never made a big deal out of it ("somebody" refused to waste all that money on fancy foods) this was probably the bleakest holiday I would experience for another eight years.