Birthday

Today is the 33rd anniversary of me. Woo hoo! Am I excited?

Well, to be honest, I like my birthday. It isn't about presents, it isn't about getting better treatment, free drinks at a bar, whatever. I mean, I still have to work tonight, I'm sure I will get some nice presents in the meantime, and I will spend time with my family and friends, and that's great. But for me, my birthday isn't about any of those things.

It's about cake.

Just cake.

I can't eat ice cream anymore since I am getting older, but I love cake.

Vanilla cake, vanilla icing with lemon filling cake to be precise.

And that is the kind of cake that has been ordered for me, and that I will be enjoying on Sunday :)

Where were you?

Today marks the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001.

I remember this day very well, I can remember almost every detail very clearly. Just after the first plane hit, my brother called me from his car on his way to school, and told me that he just heard a plane hit the World Trade Centre in New York. We both thought it was a small plane, that it was some sort of accident. I went out and turned the tv on, to see what had happened.

I told Dave that it wasn't a little plane that hit the building, it was a big one. I was telling him what I was seeing, that there was a gaping hole in the side of the tower, and that smoke was billowing out of it. As I was telling him all of this, the second plane flew into the other tower, I watched it happen live. It was the most horrifying thing I have ever seen.

A few minutes later, I heard where the planes were from, where they had been hijacked. I realized that one was from Boston, and was bound for Los Angeles, and I knew my uncle quite often flew from Boston to the office in L.A., and that he was scheduled to take a trip soon. I couldn't get through to my aunt in Boston, but I did get through to my grandmother, who had gotten through, and told me that my uncle was safe, he didn't have to travel that day. I was overcome with relief, but horror at the realization that other people were not feeling the relief that I felt, that members of their families were gone.

September 11th, 2001 showed us how awful people can be, how evil and heartless they are, but it also showed us how selfless and heroic people can be too. When I think of September 11th, I think about all of those emergency workers who gave their lives trying to save others that were trapped inside the towers, and in the Pentagon. Those men and women are true heroes.

I think about my own country, and how people in Gander, and all over Canada, opened their doors to travelers that were stranded. I think about standing on my parents porch, and watching fighter jets on their way to patrol the border, and the strange absence of any other planes in the sky.

I remember most of all though, the thought that our world had changed, in a dramatic and terrible way.

To anyone that happens to read this, where were you when the world we knew changed? What memories do you have, what were you thinking? Everyone has their own memories and thoughts about that day, and if we share it all we will keep the memory of those heroes who gave everything, we will keep the memory of those whose lives ended on that day, and we will keep the memory of those whose lives were forever changed.