I had a fairly weird 9/11 realtime experience. I had pulled an all-nighter and ended up going to sleep right around the time this all started happening. So I went to sleep blissfully unaware, and then was woken up by my wife. Within 30 seconds of being woken up I learned: "4 planes were hijacked. They were flown into the World Trade Center. The WTC collapsed."
I kept waiting for the punchline, but then realized it wasn't coming...
Something similar from my side. Was in college, on the West Coast, and had no early classes so I was still asleep. It wasn't until the girlfriend's family called her and woke her up - that we found out something was wrong. They were on the East Coast and her father was flying that day (just ended up grounded and stuck for a few days). But I don't think we woke up until 8 or 9am PST, Noon East... so by the time we were awake it was "over". Totally surreal to wake up to something like that.
I don't think anyone at the entire College did anything but watch the News channels, even though there wasn't anything "new", for the next 2 days.
I kept waiting for the punchline, but then realized it wasn't coming...