I thought I was getting back to normal, mentally, after the Sept. 11 attacks. Started feeling okay about going back to work, settling back into my commuting routine, without jumping everytime the train stopped suddenly.

But I had a nightmare early Tuesday morning, about planes crashing and being shot out of the sky. It was so realistic, and I woke up feeling terrified. Then we had a departmental meeting at work later that morning, in which the topic of the terrorist attacks came up. Our VP discussed how the company and the building management handled things. She stressed that, if something similar happens again, we are to use our own judgement of our personal safety. Meaning that, if the company doesn't close, but we feeling personally threatened by outside events, that we need to make our own choices about leaving. She said that's what she'll be doing.

I found out later that, in the senior staff meeting on Monday, there'd been strong differences of opinion about how our company reacted to the attacks on Sept. 11. Some managers felt that we shouldn't have closed. EP obviously felt that we should have, and I think she was preparing us for the possibility that we might *not* close next time.

Then, at 4:00 yesterday, when I was in our floor's lobby, I smelled smoke and heard a distance fire alarm. The alarm wasn't sounding in our area, so I told MZ and JZ about it. Then we noticed other people from our floor exiting via the stairs. And we heard the building's recorded announcement saying to leave the building. So we walked down the stairs. It turned out to be minor, just burned popcorn on the 9th floor. But it was disturbing that we couldn't hear the alarms. If it had been real, and I had stayed in my office, we wouldn't have known to evacuate.

We're having a meeting this afternoon with building management, to discuss the fire system and evacuation procedures.