9.11 in NYC

So I have received several phone calls from people wondering about my 9.11 since I live in NYC and all. So, my 9.11 went a little like this:

I was supposed to be in the office at 7:15 to do some morning work but I was held up and late because the NYPD blocked off the street in front of my office to cars and pedestrians so that the President's dumb motorcade could drive by. When I got to my office there was an email from the Office Manager that said that we would observe a moment of silence in the office and "I recognize that on this tragic anniversary emotions and anxiety may be stirred up. Please be reminded the Employee Assistance Program (EAP) is a resource to you for these type of situations."

It was not talked about, only when I asked someone in accounting the date as I was signing a document I got a shocked and disgusted look and then quickly remembered.

I was talking to a friend of mine who is a native New Yorker and recently moved to BYU about 9.11. The interesting thing is that people here don't talk about it. It is too horrific and too close for them to feel comfortable talking. If you ask them directly they will just say a few things and in a very hushed voice. For New Yorkers, 9.11 is a day truly reverenced. My friend said that she talked more about it in the week since she has been in Utah than in all the five years since it happened that she was in NY. As though, for people in other parts of the world it was this crazy awful thing they saw on TV but for New Yorkers it was like they spent a few days in Hell and they don't want to talk about it.

As I was walking to the Subway after work I was thinking what that walk would have been like five years earlier. I know that all the subways were down and I could have seen the towers from my office. I would have seen people all covered in white dust walking along side me. It would have been truly awful.

As it was, I went home instead of to FHE which was going to be a 9.11 memorial up at a park by the church. My commute home is 45 minutes, that would have been an extra 45 minutes and I had to get a few things done. Saturday marked my one year in NY anniversary, so I gave in to the idea that I might be here a while and bought a bed. I slept on an $8 air mattress for 9 months before buying a real mattress. My real mattress has been sitting on the floor since then. Yesterday my roommate and her fiance helped me set it up.

Then I tried to make chocolate truffles by tempering chocolate last night at about 11 for my roomate Emily's bridal shower on Wed. It was a disaster as all the websites I read TODAY warned me that it would be.

So that is how I spent my 9.11. I did go to Ground Zero last year on 9.11 and I went on Saturday when Teresa's friend Jessica Jackson from Germany was here with her husband and his aunt. I was the tour guide.