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So what are your thoughts on the show? It was very well done but I have to say that it really #@$%ed me up, once again. They were showing footage that I hadn't seen since that day. Like the blond reporter saying "We are here, as close as we can possibly get to the World Trade Towers" and the cameraman panning up JUST as Tower Two started to go.

I have it on tape, and will try to watch it again today. I was at the Marriot for three days in late August for a convention (my last trip to the area), and it's become something of an obsession for me to find that building in the disaster footage, at the point before it was completely destroyed. I saw it three times during the "9/11" documentary. There were these hideously big "bites" taken out of the building after the first tower fell, and when Tower One came down it obliterated everything but about three stories on the souther end. That was where that lovely bar was located.

I don't know why I do this to myself, it just seems important to get the physical layout all set in my mind. It was so disturbing to look at Ground Zero on television and not be able to orient myself visually to something as basic as north and south. It was that unrecognizable.

My uncle's best friend was at a breakfast meeting at Windows on the World that day (he didn't even work in the building). He apparently fled the restaurant right after Tower One was hit. The last anyone heard from him was when he called a relative to say he was all right, and he was on, IIRC, the 87th floor waiting for an elevator down--you have to change from local to express at certain points.

My fiance's second cousin worked on the 101st floor of Tower Two, and also decided to get the hell out right after the first impact. She also called her mother from the 87th floor to say she was all right, and on her way out as soon as she could get on an elevator--and she did get on one. From what I heard later through the family grapevine, the second plane must have hit just before her elevator reached the lobby, because when the elevator doors opened there were burned people in the lobby. Everyone was directed outside somehow, and it took her hours and hours to get home. Her mother didn't know if she was alive or dead until late in the afternoon.

I had met my uncle's friend and this second cousin of my fiance's about two times apiece, so it's not like I knew them well. And they didn't know each other at all. But I have thoughts about them that I can't get rid of, because they were both on the same floor at the same time, waiting for elevators and making calls to let loved ones know they were okay. One made it out to safety and one didn't. I have this scenario in my head that the gentleman, who was a real gentleman, is standing right next to the cousin in the crowd near the elevators, and says something to the extent of "No, you go ahead; ladies first..."

See, I told you this has really messed me up.