Beyond sad

I didn't go in to work today.... just felt blah, had a headache, and really needed a day to pull it together.

That said, I was able to watch the unbelievably horrific events at Virginia Tech unfold. It started when I first went online this morning and I saw that "one person" had been shot there. Awful enough.

Then, a couple hours later when I turned on tv, I saw that there were actually 21 dead, 22 if you count the shooter... WHAT?! That's quite a difference.... and unbelievably horrible. I wore myself out watching all the updates, and it was draining watching that one cell-phone video where you could hear the shots. So I took a nap.

When I woke up? Thirty-three dead in total. OMG. Unfathomable. I can't even begin to imagine what parents of students at that school are going through.

Of course, there's all kinds of hindsight going on now. My first thought was "if the first person was killed at 7:15am, why in the world didn't they lock that campus down?!" Made no sense. And then when I later heard that of a school with 26,000 students and only 8,000 live on campus, it should have been a no-brainer to block off the entrances for the commuter students and tell them to go home.

Later on, during the press conference, I actually felt sorry for the president (of the school) and the police chief, who had to dodge questions like that. Questions that make so much sense now that we are looking back on it. I recognize it's a huge undertaking to manage students and faculty of that magnitude. But really... a shooter who got away? And you're "told" he left the campus? That's enough?

I know it's pointless to lay blame now.... and I'm not there, so I clearly don't know the whole story. It's just so damn sad. And so senseless.