There are some things that just don't bear thinking about. Some questions you simply do not think to ask, and even if you did, you would not want to know the answer. Just what parts of which animals went into this hot-dog I'm about to eat? How often do my parents have sex? Does the president of the United States have regular bowel movements? Stuff like that.

I remember sitting in front of CNN for hours last September, watching the horrible spectacle of an airplane crashing into the World Trade Center again and again and again. Not once did it occur to me to wonder what a plane crashing into a building sounds like. Not once.

Now I know.

Lucky me, eh?

It sounds, if you're interested, very loud. Even a very small plane hitting, say, the Pirelli building makes a very loud noise indeed. Sonic boom level. Imagine the kind of thunderbolt that would accompany lightning striking a tree fifty feet away from you. That kind of noise.

Only, it wasn't thunder: it was bright and sunny for the first time in a week. And Milan doesn't seem to get that many thunderstorms anyway. I was in a store, waiting in line to buy a pair of jeans decorated with roses and bits of lace and tigerstripes, which sound odd but are wickedly gorgeous. So Angie went outside with most of the other customers, and looked up the street to see what what going on. After a while she came back in. No one had a clue, but maybe there had been an accident because there was a crowd gathering at the intersection at the end of the block.

Car accidents don't make that kind of noise. Unless, I thought, maybe one of the vehicles was a gas truck and had exploded, but then certainly there would be smoke and flames, but nothing like that was visible.

It was my turn at the register, and a stockboy came inside and told the cashier that terrorists had just attacked the Pirelli building in an airplane. He'd heard it from a guy on the street. The cashier told him not to be spreading rumors, especially not ones as ridiculous and frightening as that. I didn't say anything to Angie (who doesn't understand Italian), but after we paid we walked up to the end of the block, where the crowd had gotten bigger and some police had just arrived to direct traffic. The air smelled of burning tires.

There wasn't an accident, not there. The intersection was full of people gawking, looking down the street. So we joined them, and gawked at the big hole in the side of the Pirelli building, and the black smoke smudging up to the sky, the twisted pieces of metal jutting out of the gash and the jagged panes of glass. It looked like there had been an explosion.

The Pirelli building was Italy's first skyscraper. It was designed by Gio Ponti and built in the fifties. It's slender and elegant, and it's the most famous building in Milan aside from the Duomo.

It looked unreal. This is the kind of thing you see in action movies and the kind of news broadcasts that make you want to withdraw from the world. Hide under your bed and not come out until people have figured out how to be nice to each other for a change. It'll be a long, long wait, of course-- but worth it in the end.

I didn't want to look anymore.

So we left the gawkers and walked up the street to a cafe in a flower-lined courtyard deep in a large palazzo, where a fat and very slow waitress brought us prosecco and we listened to the news on the radio, the sirens, and the the helicopters flying overhead. We learned that there had, indeed, been a plane. A small plane. It was flown by a 67 year old Swiss man, who belonged to a flying club in Locarno and made the short flight from there to Milano in order to keep up his pilot's license. That one person in the building had been killed, a cleaner tidying up at the end of the day. That there were many injuries, mostly of the broken-arm-and-cuts-and-scrapes variety. Later, a third person would be added to the death toll.

And instead of mourning a poor old man who'd had an accident in the plane he loved, and the innocent people on the ground, we felt happy and relieved that it wasn't an act of terrorism perpetrated by some wild-eyed fanatic.

Another depressing facet of Our World Today.

It was a busy day all around.

I had Italian first thing in the morning, then went racing across town to a Romanian restaurant well out of the center for the Oriental's Abroad monthly luncheon. The choice puzzled me. It's hardly "oriental", is it? I mean, Romania is in Europe, or at least it was last time I checked. This was confirmed by the OlderItalianLadiesContingent, who were complaining bitterly about how long it took to get there, and why were we there in the first place. The OlderOrientalLadiesContingent agreed. Romania is European, and a Romanian restaurant is hardly the proper menu for the monthly Oriental luncheon.

The food, however, was fabulous. Romanian food is very similar to Turkish, with a few Greek touches. Even the dessert-- dense, moist cookies laced with some type of booze and lemon cake with a thick layer of creamy frosting-- was out of this world.

The coffee sucked. Like Turkish coffee, but without the flavor and twice the grounds.

Then Angie, Maggie and I went on our little shopping trip on Corso Buenos Aires, a few blocks from the ill fated Pirelli building. Maggie and I got some lighter clothes for our upcoming trip to Gozo, and Angie continued her quest for F-cup bras that are actually sexy.

We were at the cafe until after eight, and then came back to our apartment. Elvis and Mr. V worked late, and when they finished we decided to go to the Happy Chinese, because they are always happy to see us and happy to serve us after ten in the evening.

The Happy folks at our local Chinese have been improving their menu again. Now available: crunchy lobster balls, which were indeed crunchy, as well as being extremely yummy and easy to eat with chopsticks. Which is more than I can say for the steamed vegetable rolls. I always end up with the entire cabbage wrapper dangling from my mouth on the first bite, with the shredded vegetable filling heaped on my plate. Very hard to tweeze up, that shredded vegetable filling. But it's tasty, so I always order it anyway. Angie and Mr. V got the beef fondue, which was really Mongolian barbeque, but which was rather fun and mouthwatering. Made a mess of the dome-shaped grill, but Hey, we don't have to clean it, do we.

Didn't get to bed until four, which made this morning rather wrenching. Especially since I was awakened by JC, who can be hugely irritating even without a hangover and on a full night's sleep. The main problem is that you can't shut her up. This morning was no different. I'm pretty sure I was nice to her, though. At least, to my best recollection. She has a thick skin anyway, so I'm not worring about it.

She was callling about tonight. Tonight is the AIM happy hour, which I planned. I may not be able to organize art exhibitions or build up my own architecture and design company from scratch, but if you're looking for a good booze-up, I'm your gal. It's at the Mardi Gras, which is almost cheating because all I have to do is ask Tommy. "Hey, can we have a happy hour? Lots of food, and we want the first floor to ourselves so we can play pool if we want." Tommy, of course, says Sure! And that's pretty much it, aside from making sign-ups and collecting money, etc. Should be fun though. The last one certainly was. As I dimly recall, we had a great time carousing and drinking too much and staying out until four in the morning.

I've just about recovered from last night, so I guess it's time to start all over again.