A great find
I'm closing down our Earthlink internet service because it's time to upgrade. In doing so, I've been cleaning out my earthlink email account and finding neat old things I'd saved from years ago.

Getting rid of Earthlink is kind of bittersweet, I suppose. I've been with them since June of 2001. Yeah, seriously. Even the gal I spoke with on the phone today was shocked when she looked that up. Anyway, Earthlink's never given me too many problems, really.

As I've sorted through the old emails, I found one from ages ago reminding me that I had access to Earthlink's website builder. Then I remembered that I once had an Earthlink website. I logged in and looked it all up. Wow, it's so very 2002 and crappy.

Then I looked through all the photos I had on there and came across something that made me so happy I yelped: The digital photos I took at Ground Zero when I was there in early October 2001 for my first ever freelance reporting assigment for the Disaster News Network.

It's like these photos were meant to be taken away from me. DNN changed servers a few times and because we hire stupid IT people and my boss is dumb, we'd loss many, many of our old photos. So I thought these were lost forever. Also, the digital camera they were once on (old school and cheapy Polaroid digicam we got for maybe $20 on clearance at Filene's Basement in Boston) was stolen, as was the laptop they were housed on. Ah, Boston and it's multiple apartment break-ins.

Anyway -I found the photos. It's like a special little gift from my past self who once put them up on a crappy Earthlink DIY website. They are viewable on my website, rather they were stored in the photo section of my website builder.

And now I will share them with you all. They're nothing phenomenal as far as quality (again, crappy digicam), but they sure mean a lot to me. I can remember what it was like to be standing there taking those shots, reporting on such a major event as a young reporter. I'm not saying I'm an old reporter now, just that I have more experience and now I've seen lots more terrible things.

Enough talking, here they are.

This first one was my favorite, we used it on DNN's front page with one of my articles. It was taken I think from the intersection of Church and Chambers streets, but I'm not sure. In any case, it's looking south and it's the southernmost point they'd let you go coming from one direction.







This next rings home to me because of the toxic dust issue I've been following since then. Just look at that dust on the buildings.

I'll just post the rest now. Some are of tributes people wrote in the dust or taped to walls right by Ground Zero. Others are of a destroyed building 7 in the distance, or of distant destroyed WTC buildings. The rest were taken from Broadway and Vessey streets or Broadway and Fulton, I believe, looking east toward Ground Zero. One might also be from Broadway and Liberty streets, the one where you can see the WTC building rubble itself, along with a crane.

Misc.
--When I was a kid and the topic of oxymorons came up, friends and I would always laugh as we recited them. I would always throw in "jumbo shrimp," because I love that one. Others would get said and we'd laugh (boneless ribs! pretty ugly! freezer burn!). And then inevitably someone would toss out "military intelligence" and everyone would laugh - everyone except for me.

I genuinely never understood why people laughed at that one. Seriously, I just didn't get it - why was that funny? It wasn't until years later (yeah, I'm slow) that I realized it was because many people view those in the military as dumb. Of course I never thought that because my dad was in the Air Force, and he's one of the smartest (if not the smartest) people I know. All of the military friends of his that we knew were also very smart people.

I guess these folks who laughed had just grown up in an atmosphere with either no military folks around them, or maybe the wrong kind. Who knows?

It's just funny as I look back on it now and see how different lives can really give you different perspectives.

That all sounded better in my head. Hmm. I hope you all understand what I'm getting at, why I find it interesting to look back upon.

--In other news, Amy and I were out on our front porch the other evening enjoying the perfect weather. It was a beautiful situation really - we were eating ice cream, there was a nice breeze, it was just after dark, families were out playing - so on and so forth. We smiled and noted that....right as I looked down to see a rat sitting in our front yard. He was just hanging out and then he ran into the bushes by our porch. Amy ran inside. Seriously, she just jumped up and ran inside as I ran screaming toward the bush hoping to scare the rat away.

When she came back out empty-handed, I asked why she escaped indoors.

"I went to get the baseball bat."

That's my pastor of a wife for you. I told her I would've rather had a golf club, then you can kill it while also sending it elsewhere. A bat will just kill it and then you have to deal with it.

About that time the rat came back out from the bush and ran down the neighbor's front steps and under our car.

"Oh no you don't you bastard!" I yelled as I ran toward the car. "You will not destroy this car's wires, too! I hate you!" And then I kept yelling and clapping my hands and bouncing the car up and down. I gave up after a bit because I didn't know where it had gone.

I returned to our porch and sat again. Then Amy pointed out that the rat had followed me. There he was, coming up our steps. Bold little bastard. We yelled and screamed again and he ran off into the neighbor's yard. And right at that time she opened her front door to find out what the commotion was.

"There's a rat in your front yard now. We were trying to scare it away."

"Oh," she said, peeking out from behind the door. "Well then, you won't be mad if I go back inside then, huh?"

"Nope."

Ah, Baltimore.

Tomato....OF DOOM!

Here you'll see Amy phoning the police about the giant tomato that's taken up residence in our home. Our tomato plant in back of the house is out of control and the fruits are threatening to take over unless we let them use the basement rent-free.

Rrrright. In any case, I was getting a nice photo of the first tomato to come off our plant when I noticed the fun of perspective while Amy was on the phone. This tomato is really only about 3-4" wide. This photo reminded me of one of my all-time favorite movies, though, "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes." Which I own. On VHS. I finally had to buy it because I'm positive I was the only one renting it at the video store every few weeks when I was a kid.