Zefrank.com is an incredibly entertaining site. I have a link to it on my links page...but I never really looked at it. Just the dancing part. Look at what I made.

Neat huh?

My last blog post before the twin towers went down, about 4.5 hours before it all happened.

As horrified as I was by the imagery and news reports of what had happened on that day, I'm almost definitely sure I didn't understand the magnitude of the attack. I was 17 years old and about to start my first year of college; it was a little less than a week before I was supposed to move into my dorm. The morning of the attack had been like any other summer morning of that break. It was past 8:30am PST (around 3 hours after the initial plane crash I think). I was in bed, asleep when my dad burst into my room. My first thought was that he was going to chew me out for sleeping "late", since my parents had (much to my dismay) woken me up at around 8 or 8:30 in the morning every day of summer vacation to keep my sleeping habits on schedule. Instead, he was in a state of excitement (not the good kind) as he frantically informed me that the twin towers had both been destroyed and a plane had crashed into the Pentagon. I was half asleep and slowly tried to piece together what he had just said. I woke up and immediately logged onto the Internet which flooded me with headlines and photographs of the attack. I could hear the news on the television from my dad's office upstairs where he was working.

The next handful of days I spent at home were quiet and uneventful with this odd, dark cloud hanging over everyone's heads. I teared when I listened to the voicemails left by victims, I tried to figure out a way to donate blood (which, if you know me, is kind of a BIG freaking deal), I worried about possible future attacks, especially since Los Angeles was seen as a likely target. Other than these small changes to my routine (among other things) I went about business as usual; there were still a lot of things I had to do in preparation for my move to Irvine. The evening of September 11th I went over to a friend's house to drop off a birthday gift. I wished this friend a slightly ironic "happy" birthday on my blog, Rediff (probably combing Blogger for any posts that made any mention of the attacks) picked up that quote and put it in an article as supposed proof that everyone was "moving on" already. No, I hadn't moved on. I don't think anyone had in that short 24 hours. I did, however, try keep on functioning as I did before.

Ten years later now, I really have to think to remember what things were like before 9/11. Ten years later, I can't believe it's been so long. My entire adult life has been post 9/11. What would I be doing if it had never happened? Would I be a different person?

So, here's my little memorial to commemorate this date. I went back to Zefrank and letter project, retracing the steps of one of the last things I did before America was changed forever.