Election Day

Since living in Charlotte, I've never actually voted on Election Day. I've always gone during early voting. However, this year, I was a bit preoccupied with a newborn and a toddler, and I couldn't spare the 2+ hours to wait in line at the early voting place. So today I was able to line up a wonderful neighbor at the last minute to watch Mason while I took the baby with me to vote. I waited one hour while Lauren thankfully slept in her car seat carrier. (This is also the first time I've ever had to wait in any sort of line to vote.)

This election year has just been exhausting to watch. I really hope that by tomorrow the phone calls from various politicians telling me how to vote will come to an end. (I've even been getting phone calls from candidates running in Texas - where we lived four years ago!) I also actually look forward to some regular commercials on TV for a change. And I can't wait for all the ugly signs littering the roadsides to disappear. It seems like this election has been going on forever, and I look forward to it being over, regardless of who ends up winning.

Where Were You?

I remember exactly where I was on that tragic morning seven years ago today, as I'm sure most people do. It's funny how you remember just what you were doing when you get any big news or some major event happens. It's as if that moment is frozen in time. I remember where I was during the Challenger shuttle disaster (watching it on TV in my 3rd grade class), when I heard the news of the Oklahoma City Bombing (on a cruise with my high school senior class), when the OJ Simpson verdict came through (Chemistry Lab, freshman year at Georgia Tech), and for the news of Princess Dianna's death (house sitting for my boss).

On September 11, 2001, I was 24 years old and living on my own in an apartment off Tryon Street near the Coliseum in Charlotte. I'd been working for what was then First Union as a data analyst in the Charlotte Plaza building uptown for a little over a year - my first job out of college. Dave and I were dating (long distance since he had been transferred to Houston with his job), and still about a month away from getting engaged.

That morning I was in a SQL training class at work which started at 9:00. Shortly after it began, a man from our department came up to the 6th floor where our class was located, and said some news had come through that a plane had hit one of the World Trade Center towers. We were shocked that some pilot could have been so careless. We all talked about how awful it must have been for that pilot (who certainly couldn't have had more than one or two passengers) and any one in the building who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Since we were all sitting at computers, we tried getting online to see if we could read some news about it, but none of the news Web sites were coming up. At first we chalked that up to some sort of Internet glitch in the building. Several minutes later, we did finally get a glimpse of a picture of the plane entering the first building from ABC.com. It was an awful image. We tried figuring out what kind of airplane it was.

Almost immediately, we got news from someone else on our floor who was watching the news on TV in the break room - a second plane had hit the other building. We all knew at that moment, it wasn't an accident. Not long later, word came from our manager that we were all to go home. Uptown Charlotte, the second largest banking center in the country after NYC, was being evacuated. The tragedy started feeling like reality at that moment. As we were leaving, I heard a man say, "This is all thanks to Osama bin Laden". I remember thinking "How could he possibly know that".

Driving home to my apartment, I tried calling Dave and my parents, but the cell phone lines were all tied up. All the way home, I listened to the radio news. I heard the news about the Pentagon. I arrived home and turned the TV to Fox News, just in time to see the first building collapse, then learn the news of the downed plane in Pennsylvania, and see the second building go down. I was glued to the TV, and the rest of the day was a blur. I don't even remember eating that day.

With marriage, moves, and children, there have been many life changes in the past seven years have put a lot of distance between then and now, but I hope I never forget that day. There are too many innocent people that need never be forgotten.