I'm glad we slept late. I'm glad I didn't even know this horror was going on until almost noon. My sister called about 10 times trying to get us to wake up. We didn't hear the ring, we didn't hear her voice on the answering machine. We woke up very late, played with the cat in bed, and I had a shower and brushed my teeth. All that happened before Mark hit play on the answering machine and we hear her voice telling us to wake up and turn on the TV. There was also a message from my best friend Perfect C telling me that she was in Albuquerque, safe but not where she had headed: San Francisco.

I immediately thought about our friend and step-sister in Washington. We called the folks and they had heard from her. She and her husband were two blocks from the Pentagon when the plane hit. We checked with the sax player who has sisters in New York. One had been on a subway going downtown when the system was shut down. She got out and walked and saw the first tower collapse.

A sick feeling has been in my stomach all day and my head hurts from the reality of this. I really don't have a grasp of reality on this yet. The Challenger disaster gave us a finite small number of true individuals that we could mourn. Oklahoma City gave us story after story of individuals and a finite number. Tonight the numbers haven't even been estimated because it is going to be in the thousands, maybe ten thousands. We don't know the individuals yet. I'm sure by the end of the week I will know people who know people who died. It is truly a small country we live in.

In my own little world my grandmother went home from the hospital. I tried to ask if she had heard about the attacks but she was quite addled and didn't understand. I should have gone to see her today but I felt compelled to stay close to home. I will go there tomorrow. She was well cared for.

I had recorded tonight's show last night. Knowing that those jolly, peppy comments could not be allowed to be aired, I headed up to the station tonight to recut them in light of today's situation. I turned on the radio for the first time today (a terrible comment from a radio pro) and heard our station broadcasting the ABC TV news. I turned around and came home and called the station to discover that we were going to only be carrying news overnight so there was no need for me to recut the tracks. There will be no George Jones or Willie Wednesday tonight after midnight. A relief. I worry about stations that so blithely ignore national news.

Today I was very relieved that my job as a voice tracker was over. This would be a horrible day wondering if my voice were on the air in distant cities ignoring the most important news story of our time. This may be the very type of disaster that makes radio corporations and radio listeners realize how important local disc jockies and local stations are. I hope so.

I am going to go to bed and hope I don't dream of fireballs and dive bombing planes and terrorists. I hope you sleep peacefully too. And I hope there is peace tomorrow in our world.