Wow, so there has been other stuff going on in the world!

[Pacifist Patriot]

Still no power or cable at my home. Don't expect power until the weekend. 42% of Brevard County is still down. I have had to explain to several friends from around the country that a generator does not run the A/C for an entire home. It's over 90 degrees in my house. Consequently, spending as little time there as possible.

Amazing how you can feel really out of touch because of the loss of connectivity for a single day and sporadic connectivity thereafter. So much mental energy spent on my family, friends, and neighbors, that reading WaPo alerts and checking DU for the daily toons hadn't even occurred to me until today. Not sure how many Ferrets I am behind. Gradually coming back up to speed with the world outside of Florida. Hoping I'd see an indictment or six, but I'll take what news I can get.

Fortunately my work has power so I can now get AC, Wifi, and hot coffee there. And I put my two teenage boys in the office across the hall from me since no one is using it right now. Bright side!

My husband and sister are still home because their businesses cannot re-open yet. But that is giving my husband plenty of time to chat with our insurance company about a new roof. Another bright side!

The school system sends daily updates about the next day. Today they announced still closed tomorrow, but I don't expect the kids will be back in school until Monday. They are fine with that now. Just wait until they realize they've lost some holiday days during the year or have to go an extra week at the end of the year.

My area was mostly a few shingles blowing off roofs, fence sections down, tree limbs and some smaller trees down, signage blown out, water supply issues, and of course loss of power. Seems like evidence of gusts/microbursts. Weird pockets of significant damage and some areas that look untouched. If you saw my parents' yard you'd never know so much as a normal thunderstorm had blown through. Meanwhile the soffit above my garage door, just a couple miles away was lying in my driveway when I returned home. A gas station on one corner looks perfectly fine while the opposite corner had the pump awning collapse, one end rip away, and a gas pump on its side.

For another bright side, check out the Facebook page for the Gainesville Police Department if you're on FB. Priceless!

Oh, and I was able to download Secretary Clinton's book to my phone and have bluetooth headphones. That will be my after canned dinner entertainment tonight. Another bright side with a depressing tint to it given it's about her loss. But still looking forward to hanging with Hillary later.

Cheers!

P.S. The news reports of bumper to bumper return traffic is exaggerated in many areas. I'm sure it's bad, but so far friends and family headed back to Naples, Miami, and here are reporting it is actually much better than they feared it would be. My sister made the best time from Jax yesterday she has ever made. I did learn from her that if you are going to evacuate, bring several rolls of toilet paper and wear close-toed shoes. Rest stops are...unreliable. Kind of makes staying and enduring the loss of power a little more acceptable by comparison. Ha!

[snowybirdie]

1. Great

Floridians need a sense of humor now. Good update

[raven mad]

2. I remember begging ice, and using a regular box fan.

NOT pleasant. Born/raised Merritt Island - there from 1956.

[teach1st]

3. Food tip from across the peninsula

If you are allowed to at work, and you can get your mitts on any kind of ingredients, bring a slow cooker (crock pot) to the office and cook there.

http://www.crock-pot.com/recipes.html

Here in Pinellas 75% lost power. I think we're down to a little of 60% now. I too forgot to check any other news besides Irma news for a while.

Hang in there! When I was in Hawai'i during a hurricane, we lost power for two or three weeks. The first three days were the worst, and then we all got used to it. Of course, the weather in Hawai'i is more comfortable.

[Pacifist Patriot]

4. Crock pot tip is great!

Yep, the grocery stores are getting resupplied. Kudos to Publix for their supply chain and relentlessly cheerful employees!

[genxlib]

6. Agreed on Publix

My Dad is one of those employees. He has over 20 years in as a post-retirement job. He won't be able to do it much longer but it has been good for him.

[genxlib]

5. Hang in there

We finally got power this morning in Boca.

It was 87 degrees in my house most of the night. I think I might have gotten 2-3 hours of sleep between the misery. There is a reason that Florida was barely populated before the advent of A/C.

But it was glorious to wake up to power this morning. It was better in a matter of minutes.

FPL is really on top of this and is putting a ton of resources to the problem. Hope you and all the others get turned back on soon.

[Pacifist Patriot]

7. Very confused right now.

My address shows:

LATEST INFORMATION
We apologize for the inconvenience. We're working to restore your power as safely and quickly as possible.
OUTAGE CAUSE
We're still assessing the cause of the outage. We'll provide an update as soon as possible.
CUSTOMERS AFFECTED
261

Which is unchanged since the ticket was created early Monday morning. By them internally I assume, because at the time it was created I had no connectivity!

Weird pockets of houses in our neighborhood have power. Not like down one side of the street, or one section of the neighborhood. Three or four houses scattered willy nilly throughout. Doesn't appear to be any kind of pattern. Didn't so much as flicker during Matthew.

Getting frustrated with all of the texts, calls, emails, and FB statuses from friends and co-workers throughout the area who already have power back. Starting to get the feeling we'll have the distinction of being the very last house in Brevard to get power. I know that's how the other 129K people also without power in the county feel too though. LOL!

[genxlib]

8. Sorry if I contributed to that feeling

I was right there with you this morning as I saw friends and family report being powered up while we were still down.

FPL's status system is just overwhelmed right now. I am surprised it is giving you any updates at all.

We had out-of-state crews in our neighborhood last night so we were hopeful. But they left without us getting power so we thought we were screwed. Then we got power this morning with no discernible work being done nearby. It seems random so you never know.

[Pacifist Patriot]

9. Oh no you didn't.

I don't think their system is working, so checking updates online for our account is probably useless.

I have not seen one single power truck since passing one on I-75 near Ocala headed south on Saturday. I've heard rumors of sightings. And I know they are out there because people are getting their power back. Just haven't seen one anywhere near me and I was out and about yesterday.

Yep, the randomness of it is screwy!

[genxlib]

10. The system seems to be really different now

I think that they have put serious investments into redundancy so they have the ability to remotely re-route power in ways they never did before. So the thing that gets you turned on might be miles from you.

We must have lost power 20 times (for 10-30 seconds) before it finally went out for good. I think that was automatic switching and re-routing that kept turning us back on all those times.

Between that and the intra-utility cooperation that sends crews from out-of-state, they are on schedule to get the State back up and running faster than I could have imagined considering the magnitude of the problem.

I know it is hard to think good thoughts about FPL right now but they really have improved by leaps and bounds in the last decade or two.

My thoughts are with you.