My vacation seems like it was a long, long time ago... before the tragedy, when life was still normal.

Our return flight was right on schedule, meaning we returned just 7 hours before the terrorist attacks. I arrived at work at 6:30 in the morning on Tuesday September 11th to catch the vanpool to Lake Tahoe. A coworker told me a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. I thought it was done by a terribly foolish, lazy pilot and I even said, "How could that happen? The World Trade Center is tall, but it's not that tall. It's not so tall that an airplane could accidentally crash into it." Coworkers stared at me. I never suspected terrorist activity. That was unfathomable.

All of us going to the conference were sure that once we got there, we would be told that it was cancelled and that we'd get to turn around and come home. After all, our southern California counterparts would not be able to attend, meaning that our conference group would be half as large as expected.

To our disbelief, the conference was not cancelled. The conference continued, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. This infuriated me.

The disaster was mentioned at the conference a total of two times. At the beginning of the conference: "As you know, our southern California offices will not be able to make it here due to the airplane situation." And at the end: "We have made an American Red Cross box for donations. Feel free to place any donations in there and I'll be sure to get it to a Red Cross office tomorrow." I made a donation. No time of silence, no day off on Tuesday to acknowledge the disaster, nothing. I was perplexed and confused. I wanted more than anything to be back in San Francisco, away from the insensitive conference subject matter.

There I was, in isolation, far from friends or family. The Stanford Conference Center at Fallen Leaf Lake is located about 20 miles from the city of South Lake Tahoe, set far into the wilderness. The Conference Center only got one television station (ABC) and no newspapers. There weren't even telephones in the cabins. Only payphones in the lodge.

I made lots of calls with my phone card during class breaks. I called Zaugi, Buzzer, M.

Buzzer said Jeje and Jeff, who work in midtown Manhattan and live in Queens, had to walk home on Tuesday because all bridges and tunnels were closed to everything but foot traffic. It took them at least five hours. I was glad to hear they were okay.

Every night after class, I'd sit in the television room watching Peter Jennings. I couldn't believe that the World Trade Center was completely gone, into a puff of smoke and lots of rubble. And that the Pentagon, the icon of our national security, was severely damaged. And that there were thousands of people like me dead. And that our country was declaring war.

The news said type O-negative blood was needed most. I have O type blood, although I'm not sure if it's positive or negative. Still, I know from elementary school that us O-types are unlucky, in a way, because we can only accept O infusions, yet we can give to those with A, B, and AB blood types. I wanted to give blood, yet had no way of getting to a clinic to give it. I felt helpless.

I'd cry in my cabin before going to sleep. I didn't sleep very well the entire time I was there. I didn't get a full night's rest until last night, in my own bed. I used yellow-based undereye concealer every day to hide the dark circles under my eyes. I'm exhausted and drained.

Last night, I logged into hotmail for the first time since the tragedy just to find that I had 98 new messages and that all of the emails I'd received before September 11th were mysteriously erased. They haven't reappeared. Also, Internet Explorer kept performing an illegal operation after every 2nd or 3rd email I'd read and shut down. I had to re-boot over and over again and finally got exasperated and erased most of the unread emails (mostly breaking news info from CNN.com, which I subscribe to).

My friend Ulli in Germany wrote me to tell me that Germany was also in a state of shock. She said, "What happened is like a Bruce Willis film, except that a hero didn't step in and stop the terrible acts." She said that just as of yesterday, things were getting back to normal in Munich. I was touched to hear that their country had a required 15 minutes of silence during the workday, even temporarily halting public transportation services.

That is all. I'm speechless and exhausted.