I slept in.  For me, sleeping in meant waking up at 7:30 instead of 5:30.  I didn’t have to go to work in the morning; I was working the afternoon.  Instead, I had an oil change booked for my car.  My dad and I headed out early, had a coffee at Mr. Lube, got the oil changed, and headed back home.

When we got home, my mom was watching the news.  “An airplane just crashed into the World Trade Center!” she said.

“What, like an accident?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said.  “They haven’t said.  But it was a big plane.  A passenger plane.”

The second plane collided around this time, because when we all got to the TV, both towers were burning.  We just sat there, watching events unfold in shock.

I phoned up Matty K, who was working the morning shift at our store.  He was cut off from the outside world, as he didn’t have TV, radio or internet at the store.  I let him know what was going on.  He had not heard about it yet.  I kept him posted throughout the morning any time there was significant news.

I went into work at 1 in the afternoon.  It was all anybody wanted to talk about, customers and staff, understandably so.  Everybody was freaked out, especially when it became obvious that this was a well coordinated attack.  Some were scared, some were concerned for family members traveling, but most of us were just freaked right out.

It was a weird day to work, and the store was pretty dead that afternoon as everyone stayed home to watch the news.  In the end, we all just wanted to go home and do the same thing.

We couldn’t just go home and watch the news.  There was a meeting scheduled that night at 9:30 pm, that store managers had to attend.  None of us really wanted to be there, but it was decided not to cancel the meeting, even though our minds were anywhere else but work.  Our thoughts were with the lost, the survivors, the families, and trying to make sense out of those tragic events.