The office is hectic today. Liz is the only VP in our division at an office; the others are working from home as the NY offices are closed.

Thankfully, the people I know personally are fine. We did have some hairy moments that one of our underwriters was missing but she turned up okay a couple hours ago.

Although I say "thankfully" there isn't much I feel particularly thankful for, only that my personal experience will likely be further removed since I don't know anyone by name or face or touch who is lost.

In the larger sense, I'm still numb and shocked. Last October, I wandered around those buildings, those streets. As the news coverage recapped last night, I watched from the comfort of Rob's snuggle and said, "That's the Century 21 building (just a shell now, where they filmed looking out of its blown windows across to the WTC complex). I walked by that bridge (a pedestrian overpass that now hooks to nothing). There used to be shops under there (peering into the smoldering remains where the WTC buildings stood)."

It's entirely above and beyond anything I've ever seen. Earthquakes and WTO are the only experiences I've had and those did not come close to what happened in New York or DC. This morning, the Drama Queen shrieked the moment she sat at her desk -- she'd forgotten she was supposed to be at a meeting this morning. Linda and I stared at her. "Under the circumstances, no one's going to care," we both said. DQ exclaimed, "No! I have to be there!" I shook my head. "Don't get it out of proportion, DQ. It's just a friggin meeting."

My temper is short. I know it is. I snapped at Rob last night. Normally, all he has to do is tell me that I've snapped at him and I try to calm down. Last night, it sent me further into a frenzy. :-(

My sense of security and comfort are off balance, even from across the country. All the loss of life there, the wounded, the confused. I'm afraid to give blood, I asked the blood bank to stop calling me (I have a rarer blood type so they used to call all the time to encourage me to hook up), and now I fret that I'm too afraid to do something so simple, so easy. It's not like anyone's asking me to hop a plane to sift through the rubble of the site.

In the Little Game, where I sought a head count of staff, our NY GM didn't turn up till late in the afternoon. I said we weren't going to have our normal meeting and several piped up that they wanted to have a meeting, to just sit around and be together. It frustrated me; I wanted to be alone and curl up with the cats and with Rob. In the long run, it's probably a good thing we met; a sense of normalcy, of continuity for them; and for me, a chance to think of something else.

Nothing's the same, of course. I wonder about folks I know in the military who maybe were in DC; about people I know who went to work in NY yesterday; about folks who go through this type of fear and uncertainty every day of their lives in other countries. This is new to Americans, but is hardly new to others.

The office is hectic today. Liz is the only VP in our division at an office; the others are working from home as the NY offices are closed.

Thankfully, the people I know personally are fine. We did have some hairy moments that one of our underwriters was missing but she turned up okay a couple hours ago.

Although I say "thankfully" there isn't much I feel particularly thankful for, only that my personal experience will likely be further removed since I don't know anyone by name or face or touch who is lost.

In the larger sense, I'm still numb and shocked. Last October, I wandered around those buildings, those streets. As the news coverage recapped last night, I watched from the comfort of Rob's snuggle and said, "That's the Century 21 building (just a shell now, where they filmed looking out of its blown windows across to the WTC complex). I walked by that bridge (a pedestrian overpass that now hooks to nothing). There used to be shops under there (peering into the smoldering remains where the WTC buildings stood)."

It's entirely above and beyond anything I've ever seen. Earthquakes and WTO are the only experiences I've had and those did not come close to what happened in New York or DC. This morning, the Drama Queen shrieked the moment she sat at her desk -- she'd forgotten she was supposed to be at a meeting this morning. Linda and I stared at her. "Under the circumstances, no one's going to care," we both said. DQ exclaimed, "No! I have to be there!" I shook my head. "Don't get it out of proportion, DQ. It's just a friggin meeting."

My temper is short. I know it is. I snapped at Rob last night. Normally, all he has to do is tell me that I've snapped at him and I try to calm down. Last night, it sent me further into a frenzy. :-(

My sense of security and comfort are off balance, even from across the country. All the loss of life there, the wounded, the confused. I'm afraid to give blood, I asked the blood bank to stop calling me (I have a rarer blood type so they used to call all the time to encourage me to hook up), and now I fret that I'm too afraid to do something so simple, so easy. It's not like anyone's asking me to hop a plane to sift through the rubble of the site.

In the Little Game, where I sought a head count of staff, our NY GM didn't turn up till late in the afternoon. I said we weren't going to have our normal meeting and several piped up that they wanted to have a meeting, to just sit around and be together. It frustrated me; I wanted to be alone and curl up with the cats and with Rob. In the long run, it's probably a good thing we met; a sense of normalcy, of continuity for them; and for me, a chance to think of something else.

Nothing's the same, of course. I wonder about folks I know in the military who maybe were in DC; about people I know who went to work in NY yesterday; about folks who go through this type of fear and uncertainty every day of their lives in other countries. This is new to Americans, but is hardly new to others.