06:40 — She’s reached Florida as a Cat 3. It’s windy outside. Still have power. TV news shows the eye just coming ashore now. I have an e-mail from my boss, who works in a different office, asking if we’ll be working from the office or from home today. Ha ha ha.
07:15 — Blue flashes everywhere. Just lost power for a minute. Won’t be much longer…
Monday, 10:19 — Lost power right after I posted that. I had to go out in the hurricane a couple of times to knock down a gutter that had backed up. Rain traveling at over 100MPH seriously stings.
Pretty much all of Broward and Miami-Dade counties are without power. In my travels yesterday I didn’t see much structural damage, aside from a few school portables that flipped over, but debris are everwhere. Signs, trees, power lines, metal lamp posts. The local NPR station says there are 20 working traffic lights in all of Miami-Dade. I don’t think any are working in Broward.
I sacked out once we were on the “dry” side of the storm and all seemed reasonably well, but Wilma picked up steam after that. Some 1960s-era window awnings flew into my yard, from God knows how many blocks away, and beat up my car. Couple of big dents, scratches everywhere, and the mirrors are messed up. This is what I get for buying a new car…
13:35 Three of the dozen or so gas stations in the immediate vicinity of my office are open. Each has a line stretching over two blocks.
Power outage numbers. Between Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties, 2,482,800 FPL customers were affected. 75,400 have been restored. FPL still isn’t providing ETRs but according to NPR is supposed to sometime today. I’ve heard people saying anywhere from two weeks to thirty days. Yow.
Progressive can’t check out my car until Monday. Guess that’s no big deal really, it’s not like my body shop has power.
Friday Night, Way After Curfew — Mooching ‘net access and the washer / dryer from my closest co-worker. I waited in line over an hour for gas on Wednesday. They ran out when I was about half a block away. Got home on fumes and waited for a gas station close to home to come online. Hasn’t happened. This morning we managed to drive the car about 3 miles into a more affluent neighborhood, then pushed it nearly 2 miles and 2 hours waiting in line for gas. Fortunately the nearby Publix was fully stocked. Steaks for dinner tomorrow night 
Obviously I still don’t have power. FPL puts my address in the “By November 22nd” category. Fuckers. People one block over have power, the lights above their garages are keeping me up at night ’cause there are no longer trees blocking them, and it’s starting to get warm again.
Irony: Outdoor World / Bass Pro Shops is still closed.
Please send gas. Or gas cans. A generator would be groovy.
Sunday, 16:30 — Drove all the way to Orlando yesterday trying to find gas cans. They’re all gone. Andy’s in Texas, had him order me some online. Since I was in Orlando I picked up my boss’s generator. It’s only 25 amps / 3500 watts with a meager 1 gallon tank but at least we can run the fridge. Powered up my TV for a minute last night, cable is still down too.
Gas lines around here are getting shorter but it’s too early to tell if that will last.
FPL still has us in the 11/22 zone. Sigh.
At least I found propane today.
