Thursday, September 13, 2001  12:36 pm  <|>
<106> Tragedy in time: Tuesday, September 11, 2001 has become a permanently remembered date in history because of an event of massive impact to America and to the world.  And even though New York City is 1 1/2 hours away from Philadelphia, the effects were definitely felt here too as soon as it all started to happen.  I'll never forget where I was when we found out what was going on.  I was in my Interactive Studio class at the time, which starts at 8:30am.  Around 9am my teacher looks on her computer screen and says "Oh great, the World Trade Center is on fire." We didn't take it as serious at first, I mean, not to the degree that it really was.  But pretty soon we were all trying to load the news websites and someone tried to drag a tv into the room but it wasn't working.  All the news sites were overloaded too, so when one person got through the rest of us just crowded around to see the single image and quickly put together article that was already up.  My teacher's husband works on Wall Street, which is right under the World Trade Center towers, so she was understandably upset.  She couldn't get in touch with him, so she continued to teach us, but of course she was distracted.  At 11:20am we get off for our lunch break.  Walking back home was surreal.  Every single person on Broad St. was talking about, everyone was shocked, the rumors were flying.  Ambulances and fire trucks were racing down the street, trying to get through all the cars.  They closed down all the high rise buildings and historical sites, including my class building.   When we got back to our place we heard that classes would be canceled for the rest of the day.  We sat for a few hours watching the news.  It was crazy, they just kept showing the crashes over and over.  In class, before we had left, we'd heard most of the news about the Pentagon being hit and another plane crashing prematurely 70 or so miles outside of Pittsburgh.  No one knew what was going on fully, but pretty soon all the pieces began coming together.  Things calmed down later that day, but the streets were still eerily empty for a Tuesday at rush hour and everyone was shaken up.   Since then things have calmed down considerably in Philly, though I know things are still a mess in New York.  Everyone is still talking about what happened, as new pieces of information slip through, but everyone is also just trying to figure out how to move on.  And we all will, it will just take awhile...

As for things with me, aside from this recent event, I'm great.  Things have really been working out since I got back.   Even the problems I had last semester that I expected to bother me this year have worked themselves out, it's nice.  I think all involved notice the difference.   My classes are alright.  There are a couple I'm not all that excited about but then there are others that I didn't expect to like and do, so I guess it's a toss up.   I have a project to finish for my Video & Animation Technology class this weekend.  Normally we have to finish our assignments during our 6 hour class period, but I guess our teacher decided we all needed more time since some people we barely half done what we needed to do.  First we had to animate a character that we had made, then we had to morph that character into someone else's character through a series of 6-7 "in between" frames to create the transition frames.  It's pretty cool, though mine is a bit sloppy.  Now that we have the time to work on it further he's going to expect them to be awesome, so that means a bit of work for me this weekend.   At least I was ahead of most people when class ended, leaving a little less work for me, but not too much.  My weekend begins now, as it does every Thursday afternoon, so I must go and try to enjoy myself.