I avoided the news for the most part today. I don't want to watch it and I don't want to watch some movie that has prompted a whole lot of media coverage. Why would I want to do that? I saw it happen live. I looked up to the sky on the 12th and only saw contrails of our military up there. It was a time of silence.

The morning of September 11th 2001 was a morning like any other. My job was a year and a half past the dreaded Y2K disaster. Things were quite fine. And then it all changed. One of my friends ran over to my desk and told me that a plane had hit the Sears tower. I scoffed because of her source and went to check the news. Nothing worked. The net had simply stopped working. I tried to pull up site after site and then hit bloomberg news which had flames as its video lead in. I thought it was a live cam.

There is a certain comfort in knowing that I didn't see the people jumping to their deaths. I didn't see the first tower collapse. My company wanted us to get back to work like nothing happened. How foolish they were and only recently has that foolishness has come back to bite them in the butt. That's another story though. I'm no longer with the V-Kapow and I'm better for it.

I thought things were going to be locked down and the lessons from my grandparents, who lived through the depression, kicked in and I took out several hundred dollars so I could have liquid cash for a few days at least. That night I watched a video of the second plane that hit the world trade center. I watched it over and over. Each time my eyes blurred with sleeplessness and yet I watched it some more. How could someone do that? I still don't understand.

I heard a clip of Dave Letterman speaking soon after the event and he said he would never understand the religious fervor that caused those people to act that way. I still don't. I have seen beheading videos. Lots of them. I don't look at car wrecks during rush hour, but I could not help but look at those helpless people who died so that a few people could make a statement.

I will never understand how a religion could cause people to hate other people so much.

I promise to return to recipes soon. The new job is taking all of my time and I'm starting at the bottom. There is a great need to make a good impression.