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I was living and working in Northern VA at the time. I'm a PA native, so to all my friends and family, I was "in DC."
For some reason, I was running late to work that morning. My drive took about 40 minutes, and I always listened to Elliot in the Morning on DC101. For those of you not from the area, he's really irreverent and smart@ssed, but mostly funny. That was how I heard of the first plane, early on in my drive. As time went on, I knew this was something serious because Elliot was not cracking jokes. At all.
I got to work, and instead of going to my office, which was in the lowest level, I went upstairs to another office where I knew they had TVs. I think (can't quite remember) that that's where I heard about the plane hitting the Pentagon. My building was only a couple miles away, as the crow flies. Everyone rushed to the conference room to look out, but we were too low. Some of us went up to the top floor, and we could see the smoke from the Pentagon.
The main things that stick out in my mind are kind of small in comparison, but heartening in a way. Since, as I said, everyone I knew thought I was "in DC" they were all emailing and IMing me to check up on me and make sure I was OK. My ex worked in DC proper at the time, and his friends were all doing the same to make sure he was OK. He evacuated, and I forget how many hours it took him to get home. My office stayed open; by the time I drove home at 6 that night, the roads were almost deserted. So eerie.
My sister was in the second week of her freshman year at my alma mater. My dad was at work, my mom was at some meeting about 40 minutes from home. When I first heard about Flight 93, all I heard was that a plane went down in PA. This is a pretty big state, and my family members were in just a few small parts of it, but my brain automatically went to "oh my God, it was at school or at home." It wasn't, not even close, but just shows you what that day was like.
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