My 9/11 Memories

9/11/09 UPDATE: Thanks to Ace for the link, and thanks to you for coming.  May I please encourage you to check out this tribute to Susan A. MacKay, one of the victims from Flight 11?  She needs to be remembered and honored.

After that, go on over to Project 2,996 and see tributes to the other victims.

Thanks.

***

I flew into LaGuardia Airport in Queens on the evening of Monday, September 10, 2001.  I was in town to attend a meeting in advance of my upcoming move from Chicago to New York.  The plan was to fly back to Chicago on Tuesday evening, September 11.

It was only my third time in the city. I was staying with a friend in Gramercy and took a taxi to 57th street, opting to walk the rest of the way so I could take in the sights and start getting a feel for the city I would be calling home in a few weeks time.

The evening was pleasant and I enjoyed the sights of beautiful women walking up and down Park Avenue.

I met up with my friend.  We had a nice dinner and caught up. She retired early, and I stayed up late watching cable television.

The next morning, of course, everything went to Hell.

Television Choices: What An Amazing World

I watch too much TV and would like to cut back. Interfering with this, however, is the fact that we are truly in the middle of a television golden age. Never before in my recollection has there been such a plethora of spectacular programming. Forget about movies, TV is the medium for meaningful storytelling and deep character explorations. Too often nowadays, a movie is, almost by virtue of it’s short time frame, superficial. Nowadays it just doesn’t pay for character studies. Consequently, we get a lot of flash and noise and very little that actually resonates in the heart.

WOOF: Laundry Daze

Daylight Savings Time is in effect now, and I still haven’t recovered.  Made the mistake of staying up late on Saturday night in order to do my laundry, and I’m still paying the price.  It might have been okay, but that lost hour for daylight savings time just pushed me over the cliff, changing what was a vaguely naughty late hour into a complete relapse into staying up all night, the sort of schedule that now makes working a day shift feel like a sucker punch right in the testicles.