catspaw: I accept your apology, and thank you. (Y'mean I'm not a dead maggot? ;^) ) It is precisely because I had read most of your posts that the "throwoff line" took me aback. I'm sorry for my knee-jerk reaction to it.


BTW, at work we're waiting for a shipment from Florida via Federal Express, which can't come overnight by air until there are open airports to send it from and to. Alternatively, we could have it sent by ground-shipment but would have to wait 3 business days for it. Just a small example of how far-reaching the effects of this terrorist act are.

This morning, on television, they showed the pictures of four people from the local (Philadelphia PA) area confirmed dead. When I got to work, my co-worker told us that one of those pictured was his best friend's son. It was only the kid's second week on the job in his WTC office. As if it could be any worse, the friend had lost another son around this time last year, in a boating accident.

What little news I've heard today includes: the rescue dogs brought into NYC to help find people alive in the rubble are being confused by the scent of all the pieces of dead bodies everywhere. Relatives and friends asking about loved ones at information centers and hospitals are being asked to go home and come back with the missing person's hair from a hairbrush, or some other article that would have the person's DNA, to make an eventual DNA match with the body parts as they're found.

Black humor as a coping strategy? If one is dealing directly with the dead and dying, I can understand it. However, if I may vent for just a moment: The first asshole in my real-time workplace whom I hear making some sick joke about this horror is in danger of feeling my shiny metal cane across his or her "coping" teeth. If the co-worker mentioned above doesn't get to him or her first. End of vent.

(Eh, it'll never happen. Anyone who knows me already knows better than to tell any racist jokes within my hearing, so I think they'll probably extrapolate...)

Thanks for listening. I'll check in again the next time the boss lets me out of the cell for exercise.

Sharon