I am encouraged by reports that they're pulling surviving fire fighters from the rubble. I pray that Carlos' friends and former co-workers were as lucky.

I'm going to New York City tomorrow. Ground zero, as they're calling it on the news.

Why? I need to help drive Carlos back home with Eric to drop him off and then Eric and I will drive back on Sunday.

In order to do this, I have to finish my remaining 18 hours of work in a day in a half. Which means I got here at work at 6:30 this morning and will be staying until 7:30. Tomorrow, I'll be in from 6:30 to 11:30. We leave as soon as I get there.

I'm not sure how to react to this. Right now, I'm so tired, the world has taken on a funny, sharpish sort of aspect. Colors are brighter and sounds are louder than normal. I don't know how I'm going to drive after pulling two days like this.

How did this come about?

Last night I was grabbing a small snack in the kitchen when my cell phone rang. It was Eric calling. He got right to the point saying he was driving Carlos out to NYC and it would be a great help if I could come along and help drive. My first question was "When would we leave on Friday?" "Well that's the problem: before noon." My mind immediately started to whirl trying to figure out if that was even logistically possible and still get all my hours in. I said that, if I could clear it with work, that I would go with them. I sat down and figured out if I worked the above hours, I could do it. So I woke up this morning at 5 a.m., got ready, and drove in. I was one of two people here that early and it stayed that way until about 7:30. When my supervisor got in, I explained things to him and asked him if that was alright. He didn't have a problem with it and suggested I bring it up with the HR guy when I saw him about my time card. So I did and he was fine with it as well.

So, I'm going to New York. Let's hope it goes well.

I can't believe the news today
I can't close my eyes and make it go away
How long, how long must we sing this song
How long, how long
Tonight, we can be as one, tonight

My prayers are with everyone who lost loved ones in the terrorist attacks today. This is truly an unspeakable tragedy. I don't know what else to say that everyone the world over has been saying all day long. I think what I remember most clearly was people joking about the first plane crash ("What was the air traffic controller drinking the night before?") and suddenly going silent as we watched the second plane streak towards Tower 1.... Then the unspeakable horror as I walked out of my meeting to hear about the Pentagon and later about the flight outside of Pittsburgh.... Tomorrow will be the worst, I think, because all the news will be talking about is the latest body count. I don't want to be sitting at work watching those numbers rise, along with my gorge.

I am now going to try and get to bed while having the pictures of those people leaping from the building burned onto my retina. The world is still turning, life goes on, and I have to wake up at 5 a.m. tomorrow for my commute.

Today was my first day at work. It started off as a less-than-auspicious day. I set my alarm for 5:45 that morning and it went off. But instead of hitting the snooze, I must have turned it off instead. So I woke up at 6:45 instead when mom called upstairs to see if I was ready. Damn.

So I quick washed my hair, threw some styling foam into it and combed it into place. Usually it looks semi-decent when I do that. Threw on the clothes I had laid out the night before and out the door by 6:55. Not bad. Dad had to inspect my outfit first though. ::sigh:: I made it to work at 7:50 and as I walked in the door, ran into the HR guy, who sat me down with the Employee Handbook and ran off to deal with a crisis they were having with the punch card system. At 8, my supervisor walked in and he and I went upstairs. He showed me around a bit more, like the wiring closets and stuff, and then I sat down to do some work. They're in the process of redesigning their website so the other guy in the department (there's only 3 of us) was having some problems with getting the images to load the way he wanted them. Apparently he'd been fighting with this for two weeks so he was hoping I could solve it before Friday.

Two hours later, I had that finished (heee. I felt really good then) so I started working on some other layout issues they were having. Once those were done, I went upstairs to see how the current website functioned. It was sort of a bare-bones day for me. Hopefully tomorrow I'll have some work to do.

All in all, though, it was a good day. It didn't drag by, even though I'm really very tired right now. Eric and I, and maybe Carlos and Melissa, are going out to dinner tonight.

This morning was a very different morning than ones past.

I got the job.

Damn that looks good in print. Let's see that again... I got the job.

Sounds even better. :D

It was kind of surreal how I found out. I'd been daydreaming about it all day. In my daydream, Eric and I were in the car and my cell phone rings and they tell me I got the job and could I start Monday?

What really happened? Eric and I were coming back from lunch when my cell phone rings. I pick it up and stare at the number. "It's them." I gasped at him and slowed down. Eric dove for the radio to turn it down and I frantically close the windows while I hit "OK" on the cell phon e button. Insert the normal formalities here "Hello, how are you, fine.." etc. Then the guy starts talking about how he's so sorry it had taken them so long to get back to me but they had done some re-evaluation of the position. That hit my panic button, let me tell you. I thought that was the intro for "And we decided we're not going to form the position" or "And decided you really aren't the person for the job" ran through my mind. But then he continued with and we decided to base the position mainly off of what you said in your interview about how you liked doing both web design and IS sort of work so that's what you're doing. It was at that point when I realized the job was mine. Fortunately, we were stopped at a bridge that was being raised for a boat or I think I might have crashed my car. In any case, we decided I start work on Monday at 8am. After that, I hung up, turned to eric and mjust grinned. "I got the job." Then I had to calm down so I could drive back. The rest of the afternoon was, well, weird. I picked up some apartment guides, called my parents, the usual. Waited for Carlos to get back so I could tell him and then Iwent back to my sister's to make dinner. I'd told people that if they wanted to come over, they were welcome to do so. Only Eric came, which is fine. He and I had the salmon that I tried to cook the night before and pasta. Dinner was really good, if I do say so myself, and we vegged and talked and watched tv.

Today starts apartment hunting and developing a budget. I also have to go shopping for clothes now that I know what sort of office environment I'll be in. Gin says most of the people there wear khakis and polo shirts during the week and jeans on Fridays. Ahh....casual office...thank God. :D I'd die if I had to go and buy a bunch of suits.

Well, I found out last night that my sister stores flamable items in her stove. Go figure. I was going to have my nice salmon dinner. I pre-heated the oven to 400, wandered off to wait for it to heat up. The stove beeped letting me know it was done so I went and opened the door. That's when the flames shot out. She doesn't keep a fire extinguisher in her kitchen (which is funny because of the storing of flamable items in the stove but...) so I did the first thing that came to my mind: turned the sink on and grabbed the sprayer. After I turned the stove off. Turns out it was a grease trap that you put over skillets to stop them from spraying all over the counter...only this one had a plastic handle which melted and ignited. Heh. So I had cold pizza and crackers with cheese instead.

I'm hoping that's the last of the *unexpected* excitement for the week. I'm hoping to get that call today from the people I interviewed with. This is provided I can get my cell phone charged. I plugged it into my car's outlet today and it didn't start charging, which I thought bizzare since it worked yesterday. So I pulled it out of the outlet and it fell apart in my hands. I have to go get it replaced and I'm waiting for the store to open. Anyway, if I get the job, there's a bottle of champagne in the fridge with my name on it. If I *don't* get the job, there's a bottle of champagne in the fridge with my name on it. ;)

Well, I have my new car. It's cool. :D I'm very happy with it. German engineering rocks my world.

I've been housesitting all weekend and, so far, have had about half a dozen things break or go wrong. My key doesn't work for the front door so I'm using a spare set. I had to break into the house with Eric's help (he lowered me in through a basement window that had been left open). Since it wasn't very difficult, that creeped me out....which led to me being locked into my sister's bedroom with the dog and a snapped skeleton key. Mom and Dad had to come by the next day to free me. Then the garage door broke...and the opener. ::sigh:: What's next? The water heater bursting? Eep! KNOCK ON WOOD! KNOCK ON WOOD!

Yesterday we were at Lake Naga-Wauka (pronounced nah-gah-wick-ah) for Labor Day. Tons of family fun tubing and cooking out. I have bruises all over my arms from tubing. I was the first adult to go and my brother had been haulting little kids around the lake all day so I got the brunt of the "frustration". I lost my grip twice. Once was when he had thrown me over a wake and I was completely airborn. The other time it was either lose my grip or lose my swim shorts (I had on one of those two-piece dealies that are shorts and a tank-top). Heh. Other than that, it was fun. I got back, had another microwave dinner and made up the soy sauce and ginger marinade for the salmon I'm going to cook tonight after fencing. Yum. :)

Now, I'm printing up flyers to sell my old car. I think I might sell it to Alexis for, like, $1 and just have it over and done with since I doubt I'm going to make a profit on it. Dad wants me to sell it for $850 or something like that. He expects a college student will buy it. Ha! Dad's delusional like that.

Other journals:

Julie
Martha
San
Erin
Relapsed Catholic
Tony Roberts
Wil Wheaton
Playing with Swords

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