for a place that is supposed to be gloomy and rainy all the time, seattle's been quite the sunny place this summer. we've got two fans blowing on high right now. i rather miss that place that reminded me so much of england when i first got here.

two weeks left.

so what i want to know is why did someone have not one, but TWO darth vader heads for sale at their yard sale off broadway today? did they have a few extra darth vader heads lying around their apartment that they decide to sell off? did they decide to keep their favorite darth vader head and sell the rest? greg reminds me that it is a recession economy, after all.

i played UT with the boys today at work. i'm gonna miss them when i leave.

i got word from loria and all is well, thank god. she said that all the sounds of the fighter pilots flying overhead are a bit alarming and yet a bit comforting as well. meanwhile, out in seattle, a plane is flying somewhere in the distance and i, too, cringe. and i wonder at how quickly everything has changed.

is it just me? or does that light on top of the space needle look like it's sending a signal to batman?

still no news from loria. getting gravely worried.

only 12 more work days until my time out here comes to an end. hard to believe isn't it? has it been five months already? i can't say that i feel like i'm returning home though. as jesse advises, i'll try to be brave.

great news everybody -- mary wasn't on the plane. so far, though, no news from loria.

fyi, the united number is 1-800-932-8555 if you know mary and want to get on the call list when they have finished verifying their information.

everywhere bloggers are posting their thoughts of today's events. greg and i are both sick from watching all the news and yet we cannot stop watching the news. i started crying a little bit ago when they told the story of yet another plane passenger with a cell phone who called his mother right before he died. how could that not get to anyone? i thought about how hard it was to call my own mother this morning due to all the phone line jams in dc and new york.

i'm gravely worried about mary and can't find out who was on the united flight. she's a flight attendent for united and flies to LA a lot. no one can find out any information yet...and i can't help but worry. i was telling greg on sunday about how she became part of our group all those years back in high school...i guess i can't help but have her on my mind right now. i hope that she's ok.

claire sent a note from new zealand to tell me how they were just waking up to the news and that, they too, were in a state of complete shock. i feel like i wrote her back for hours...i just had to tell someone who wasn't here about the whole thing.

it's eerie out...all day it was eerie. everywhere hushed talk of what had happened, who they knew in new york and dc...what happens next. tonight, the flag that they placed on the space needle is illuminated. it's a pretty powerful thing to look at. but when we were walking around this afternoon, getting bagels from a "new york style" bagel place (with the world trade center in the logo...very sad to look at)...it was hard not to notice how beautiful the weather was. and isn't that strange?

according to cnn: "there hasn't been an instance of congress being evacuated, not even during the war of 1812..."

yeah, because we can all really identify with the war of 1812. come on people...

my worst childhood nightmare came true today and it seems that dc is now under a state of emergency. remembering high school during the reagan years...all those fears about dying back then and there...finally beginning to feel safe many, many years later. now what? jesse said that his family was fine but was shaken...the world trade center is so close to where his dad lives. i called loria this morning to see if i could get through to anyone in the dc area since i couldn't connect at all to my parents. her brother-in-law works at the pentagon...no word yet...no word about whether they will be able to come out west. thinking of ian getting called for national guard duty. wondering who will sleep at all tonight.

the company encouraged us to work from home as we saw fit, depending on our personal situations. many of us did exactly that...i just couldn't handle listening to the sounds of gunfire from whatever video game we were testing today. didn't it seem weird to all of you watching the tv? hard to comprehend that it was even real? they are drawing parallels between today and pearl harbor...i wonder how many people then felt the same, felt like what they were hearing about was completely surreal? seems all the more so being out here on the west coast. the space needle has a flag flying on top...eerie seeing it down the hill, wondering if it would be targeted. i took a couple of pictures of it for fear that the next time i walked down to broadway, it, too, would no longer be there.

it looks like it didn't take a lot of time for people to fire up their racial statements on the web. stop the hate, people...stop the hate.

my thoughts go out to all of you.

diane's pregnant, fyi. i've hardly been able to talk to her all summer thanks to the whole time zone wackiness. by the time i've gotten home in the evening, it's way, way too late to call anyone east! i guess most of you know about this though...

i'm sitting on one huge tuition bill right now...that funding better come through for real in october like it's supposed to.

how is school, everyone? i know...i've been downright awful at keeping up with this and everyone lately. i guess that you know why...one month left...i don't even want to think about it.