What an eventful 72 hours since I last sat in front of the computer. Not too much of it was good either! Not in my own life-it’s going normally, more in the world at large, of course I do have a couple of sick kids, because everyone knows when a younger one is sick, 17 can’t stay well, no matter what the symptoms are, she’ll make them up as she goes along if she has to, if anyone is staying home she’s staying there too!

I don’t have too much to say on the Virginia Tech shootings, not enough is known to speculate so far on why. I’m upset, I know, through work, at least one person who’s related to someone who got shot, though not fatally, the person in question was telling everyone in the breakroom about her brother in law who does heating, ventilation & air conditioning work & was working on the building the main shootings took place in, he got shot in the arm.

As the crow flies I’m only about 10-12 miles from the Virginia Tech campus when I’m at work, I love to go to Blacksburg & shop & check out the interesting sights there. That’s where 17 got her lip pierced earlier this year & we used to drive over there to visit Colleen at work all the time when 17 was 3 when she & I lived alone here in VA.

The whole thing unfolded for me while at work yesterday, when we came in the tvs above us on pillars were still tuned to a local Fox channel from the race yesterday (for those of you not in the south, this is refering to Winston cup nascar racing) & while I didn’t know about the shootings I’ve grown addicted to having CNN on all day while at work, (I think I mentioned this before) I asked my Boss to put it on the tv’s & he said he didn’t have a remote to do so but would ask the next manager who came by. He didn’t do so but about an hour later I noticed the tv to my left was changed to CNN & they had Virginia Tech on there, it was early & they were just beginning to put info on about the first shooting. I turned to a guy who sits at a desk behind me who is a sports fan & has his own remote set up with the tv system so he can change channels if he wants/needs to & asked him to change the tv to my right to CNN the tv on my right is about 5 feet closer to my desk & I can read the closed captions & screen crawl on, I can’t read the one on the left except the biggest stuff on there. He looked at me funny but when I said they were talking about something going on at Tech he changed it immediately.

We sat in stunned silence, all day long, we talk on the phone as our job but I don’t think anyone’s mind was on what they were doing while on the phone, anyone who asked me for something like a free service call or a replacement remote for free, I just gave it to them, free of charge for the most part. I didn’t feel like I could argue about $49 for a tech or $20. for a remote during the mess unfolding above me on the tv sets. I got stuff fixed for people, I don’t think I made any mistakes but I was not ‘there’ for them like I maybe should have been.

Only a few people out of 60+ calls mentioned the whole Tech thing. It was like that on 9/11 too at my work. I worked that day too but back then I was on a 4:30 to 1 am shift & so had been watching tv all day before coming into work. People who were calling in, & there weren’t a lot, but there were enough that they didn’t send us home early that night, were either not Americans or were upset because their service was out completely & they were missing information.

Everyone who walked by was walking with their eyes glued to the tvs above us & since there’s 6-7 of them in a row you could walk through & not miss too much. No one had anything particularly striking to say, there was some speculation, some opinions as to ‘who’ did it. We were all waiting to hear if anyone who worked at our building had been hurt or involved but at the time I left last night (930) there was no information forthcoming.

We have a lot of part time people from Tech & from the other nearby College, Radford University, I sit next to a Tech student in the evenings, he’s studying to be a doctor though so I doubt he was actually in the building in question.

It is already noticeable how the area is losing it’s charmed exsistence, we’ve been lucky here, dreaming away, enjoying our mountains & views, thinking that bad things only happen in other places, for many years & now reality has come to wake us up. I came here because of that, some people who have visite or heard things from down here have commented rather negatively to me over the years that it’s like we’re 20 years behind the rest of the U.S. I have always said, yes, that’s part of the appeal to me. We’re catching up fast.

I’m really irritated with MSNBC’s coverage of the whole thing, they keep bringing on ‘experts’ who are monday morning quarterbacking the whole ordeal, they should have done this, they should have done that. Well no one knew, hindsight is 20/20 & they did the best they could with the information they had at hand. In the end, in any situation that’s all anyone can hope to do.

I wish I had some words of wisdom for people suffering with this mess I can easily put myself in their shoes, my oldest at 17 is a year and a half from being ready to go to college & the idea of sending her somewhere that she is responsible for herself completely – especially far away from home, the few victims they were identifying this morning were from Georgia, New Jersey & Massachusetts. & to have something like this happen. Well I can put myself there very easily & my thoughts are with them all.