what were you doing on 9/11

In Austin, working at a MFG facility near the SouthEast edge of town. I was auditing a training class and we went on break. We were watching the coverage and the anchor was guessing that a light aircraft had hit the tower. Based on the damage I told my coworkers it had to be a large plane and it was terrorism - they looked at me really funny- then the second plane hit. A few hours later my dad called, he was on a business trip and his plane had left El Paso, TX for Alabama shortly after the attack. They were over Lousiana when they were told to turn back and land at Houston Intercontinental. The passengers were not informed what was happening until they were on the ground. By the time they landed all the local hotels were booked and all the rental cars were taken. He called to see if I could come get him that evening. I left work immediately and made it to Houston in about 1/2 the time it should have taken... my dad had caught a hotel shuttle and had just arrived at the hotel when I arrived. My dad spent the next couple days in Austin, finally found a rental car and drove back to El Paso.

In 1983 the marine corp Barracks in Lebanon were targeted. I was in High School ROTC and our Captain was convinced we were going to be full tilt in the middle east in short order. He was a veteran of WWII and Korea. In 1986 I enlisted in the Army Reserves fully expecting to end up over there, we actually talked about it in basic training and in my advanced training. Then, when the wall came down our reserve unit began shrinking and eventually evaporated as the Army and reserve corp shrank and the army restructured. Today there are about 2/3 the number of active duty troops as there were in 1990. I don't know how much the reserves shrank in that time. Just before Desert Storm I moved into the IRR (Individual Ready Reserve). During Desert Storm I was notified that due to shortages in my field it was likely I would be activated, most likely to backfill in Germany. Nothing came of that. I fully expected the conflict in Iraq to keep going after they liberated Kuwait, I was quite suprised they stopped. From the moment our forces were in Saudi Arabia, whether we acknowleged it or not, there were people who were at war with the US. I was suprised it took as long as it did for them to bring the fight to our soil and was in no way suprised when it happened. Now ten years has passed. What will the next ten years look like? The world in the middle east is changing rapidly. Will it be friendlier, I doubt it - look what is happening in Israel.