Where were you when the world stopped to watch?

8:46:40: Flight 11 crashes at roughly 490 mph (790 km/h) into the north side of the north tower of the World Trade Center, between floors 93 and 99. (Many early accounts gave times between 8:45 and 8:50). The aircraft enters the tower mostly intact. It plows to the building core, severing all three gypsum-encased stairwells, dragging combustibles with it. A massive shock wave travels down to the ground and up again. The combustibles and the remnants of the aircraft are ignited by the burning fuel. Since the building lacks a traditional full cage frame and depends almost entirely on the strength of a narrow structural core running up the center, the fire at the center of the impact zone is in a position to compromise the integrity of all internal columns. Two home video cameras are known to have recorded the impact. People below the severed stairwells in the north tower start to evacuate; no-one above the impact zone is able to do so.

I was on vacation from work, but hadn't gone anywhere. Basically, I had time to use up and decided to take a couple weeks and just do nothing. The first week was spent going to the Maker's Mark distillery one day, basically just bumming around. Hung out with Shaman (not his real name, obviously), and did a whole bunch of nothin'. Week two started the same way, then tuesday morning I got up, clicked on the TV straight to TNT to wait for ER to come on at 10am, then to the computer to check my email. Then my phone rang. My brother called to tell me somebody just flew a plane into the World Trade Center in New York. I turned on NBC's Today show just in time to see the second one hit. At least I think it was the Today show. I don't remember the show, but I remember the video. And so began a week of being glued to neverending news coverage.