9-11. Five years on.

Remembering the NYC firefighters lost. One of them also frequented a web board I'd been posting to for a few years when 9-11 happened. I also had a friend that worked at Merrill Lynch but who had stayed home that day due to a sick fiancee. I was quite anxious for his safety until I was able to get in touch that morning.

That was a lousy time. Ten days earlier Mother and I had put one of the cats to sleep. He'd gotten into some tainted water outside which caused a stroke. He would've been 11 that October and had been the last survivor of an abandoned litter born outside my bedroom window. 9-11's events I first heard about from Murray in Sydney. I was chatting online with him when he mentioned it had just been on the news that a plane had hit the WTC. He was getting the feed from ABC here in the States and I tuned in as well. Saw the second plane hit like many that morning. There was much sleeplessness, and the anthrax attacks. I did my part for getting back to normal by being one of the few who actually saw Lance Bass star in "On the Line" during its first run in the movie theaters. In October, a friend and one time flatmate from uni was killed in a car accident coming home from work. What a mess of shocks those few months brought to my system.

Now five years later, we don't have Osama and we don't know who sent the anthrax but as yet there hasn't been a terrorist strike successful inside the U.S. Those five years also brought me becoming an uncle (times three) and the passing of both parents. Makes me want to vomit on some abstract level.

I watched the first part of "The Path to 9/11" on ABC tonight, the first TV I've watched here live since Mother passed in Feb. I don't know why there was a controversy. There was nothing new or controversial to anyone who has stayed up on the events that proceeded and through 9/11. I have to complain because my local station is running a football game tomorrow instead of part 2! That's bull.

The first hour or so I'd rate a 9 (scale of 10). It slipped after that but was overall pretty good. I think it could've stood some editing but for all I know stuff was cut and filler put in to meet the running length allotted for tonight. No idea why it left out the bombing of the USS Cole. They jumped from the so-called "Millennium Plot" (Dec 31, 1999, although 2000 was the real end of the 20th century) to September 11, 2001. We didn't even see the hijackers get on the American Airliner. Seems an odd choice but maybe it'll be more clear when I see part 2.