mom woke me up this morning on her way to work. then she called me and told me to turn on the tv. then i saw the world trade center on fire.

tried calling dad… line was busy. he eventually called the house here saying that he was ok and that he was on his way home (but he didn’t know how long it would take). turns out from his building (about a mile or two away from the pentagon) he was able to feel the concussion and see the smoke from the plane crash.

went to work at 11… we learned more about what went on from people coming into the shop, a radio we set up, and every now and then the manager at radio shack next door would come in and tell us more about what was going on.

some of my co-workers said that when one of the co-workers came in and said that a plane crashed into the world trade center they were all “ha, ha, someone doesn’t know how to fly a plane”… then when they heard that a second plane crashed, they were shocked and realized what was going on.

the shopping center that my verizon store is in basically closed down… tower records closed down, and they’re open 365 days a year! office depot closed at 1, fresh fields closed at 4 or so… so basically the only open stores were our verizon wireless store and the radio shack next door. the parking lot was empty. we had a 2 hour stretch with no customers at all. we would have 3 people in the store and consider it to be busy. while other verizon stores closed down for the day (even verizon headquarters!), we planned to stay open (in case anybody from the dc area needed phones for emergency use) until our regular closing time which was 9 pm. the guy at radio shack was selling tvs and radios early in the day, and so he figured he’d let his workers go and sit around the shop until we closed. since we were so slow, my manager let me go at 5:30 (gotta make up the two hours sometime later this week), i have no idea if he staying around until then.

one guy at work who wanted us to close up early said that if we stayed open we might be considered a target for the next plane to crash into… “hey, there’s verizon wireless! let’s knock out the communications center of annapolis! and they’re open, so there’s got to be people there!” ^^;

we warned people not to use their cellphones, though… the system was already overloaded, and when the world trade center collapsed, it took down all of the tv and cellphone antennae on top of it.

i figured this would be a bad day. had a bad dream about being in a car crash. then this whole event. then i slammed my finger in the car door. at least it was just a dream, and at least it was only hurting my finger for a bit (no bruises! yay!). but this is still going on. ;_;

the newspaper has a giant headline: UNDER ATTACK – Planes hit, topple World Trade Center. – Explosion rocks Pentagon, spreading fear. – Fate of 50,000 in NYC unknown.

if it isn’t worth keeping the newspaper just for today’s event, at least we can keep it since it has a little article in it about my sister going to be in a competition for the anne arundel county fair queen. ^_^;

today sucks. at least i got my hard drive. but today officially sucks.