Marculations

The Publix in Lake Park is open.

They’re only accepting cash, though. I counted up my dollars. That is, what’s left of the Turnpike money I keep in my car. Five dollars.

I got strawberry jelly, a loaf of bread, and a bag of chips.

The jelly should make the peanut butter sandwiches feel more complete. Maybe they’ll go down a little smoother. The bread ensures that the sandwich flow will continue unabated. I may even increase my sandwich intake to an unheard of rate.

The chips were to eat in the car while my phone charged.

Oh and, the most important part. Somehow, through a collaboration with Satan, the Coke machine out in front of Publix was running. I got a cold Sprite. Ice. Fucking. Cold. It tasted so good.

I fired up the XM Radio to check out the media coverage our plight is getting. None. We’ve got nothing. Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, ABC News, The Weather Channel — all nothing. Well, I take that back. One of the financial networks was having a lively discussion of the economic impacts of Miami-Dade, Ft. Lauderdale and Palm Beach airports all being shuttered. Whoopie-doo.

You know, it would help being stuck in the dark for days, or possibly weeks, if I knew that the whole country had my disaster in their faces. As it stands now, you guys have forgotten about us.

For shame. FOR SHAME.

And you can’t even read this.

It makes me sad.

Just ran down to my car and got the update on the radio. They were interviewing someone from FPL. Apparently, just in our county, over 630,000 people lost power immediately during or after the storm. Roughly 32,000 of them have been brought back online as of this morning. They are estimating that the last house will be brought back online on November 15th, with most residents having power back within two to three weeks. Woohoo!

And now for an exciting edition of “How shocked am I?” Abacoa in Jupiter has power restored already. How shocked am I? Not at all. Nice to see that capitalism is in full effect. So, let’s see, we’ve got the ritzy part of Jupiter, and the ritzy parts of Palm Beach Gardens, all having power… coincidence I’m sure. Not that I’m angry or bitter, it’s just funny to point out. They were having fun pointing it out on the radio to the FPL rep, too.

The iPod finally died. I’ve got it charging off of the iBook right now. That’s going to cut down on my iBook’s battery life, but it doesn’t matter. This is only the second time I’ve used it since the power went out.

All these peanut butter sandwiches are taking their toll. I’ve been up off and on all night with the worst heartburn I’ve ever had. But peanut butter tastes so good! Oh, Jif, you are a harsh mistress!

There are whispers of our deadline for the short film being moved out due to the storm. That’ll be good, since we still don’t have power anywhere in this town. Across the intracoastal, it looks like Riviera Beach is dark, too. I called FPL — they played a recording saying that due to high call volume, I should call back later. If all of their callers are getting that, they may have stumbled onto the biggest scam in the history of phone answering.

Apparently, parts of West Palm Beach have power already. I call shenanigans, since they were supposedly hit harder than we were up here. Of course, Ballenisles and PGA National both have power, too. Gee. I can’t imagine how they got their power before everybody else.

Through sporadic, judicious use of the hot water, I can still manage to get luke warm showers for thirty seconds. Mmnnn. Luke warm. The mere thought makes me want to go take a luke warm shower right now.

Supposedly, a lot of Publixes around the area opened their doors yesterday. I drove by the Lake Park Publix, and the doors were indeed open. There were a lot of people standing around outside conversing, and there were a few lights on inside. Huge signs blanketed the front of the store — PUBLIX IS CLOSED. Fucking Lake Park. I’ll have my revenge. I did hear that the Publix on PGA Blvd. was accepting debit and credit cards, and they were even going as far as to provide cash back. I managed to get through traffic and make it to that Publix, but the line to get in was too long for me to even consider at this point. I high-tailed it back home.

Being alone in the dark without any human contact for this long is starting to make me go a little insane. And the spell checker is losing its’ mind over the word Publix. I guess it doesn’t heart corporations.

It’s about 5:25am on October 25th, the day after the storm hit us. I went downstairs and sat in the car for about an hour to catch up on news and what’s going on with the area. They said the Palm Beaches were under curfew until around 5am, and from what I could discern, FEMA will be distributing ice and meals in some different places starting at Noon. I didn’t catch which places. When the sun comes up, the cooler, the camera and I are going to drive down U.S. 1 and look for something.

It’s about 58 degrees outside right now, the chilliest I’ve ever felt it in South Florida. Granted, I’ve only been here since April. The entire city of Lake Park is without power. I can see the stars vividly in the sky from my balcony for the first time ever.

Our water supply is contaminated, which is standard stuff after a hurricane. I went to the fridge for a bottle of water to brush my teeth, and smelled the familiar rotting meat smell. I’ll never know what possessed my roommate to buy a lot of fresh lunch meat sixteen hours before the storm hit. Maybe he just wanted me to have to suffer with the smell. I’m going to take it down to the dumpster after the sun comes up. Hopefully, he can get a FEMA aid check for eleven bucks to cover the cost of replacement.

I ran out of blank MiniDV tapes. Five minutes of rummaging produced three tapes I made of me in the car on my way down to West Palm Beach for the first time. Rubbish. I’m going to start recording over them. I’ve got enough batteries to run at least two more tapes through, as long as I don’t stop to capture any footage. No worries about that, though: I’ve only got two hours of battery left on the iBook.

Apparently, it’s much worse in Ft. Lauderdale and Miami. The only news I’ve heard at this point is that the studio we shot the short film in was destroyed. I had already heard before we lost power that sections of Ft. Lauderdale were flooding, and that was well ahead of the storm making landfall.

For the most part, my car survived. Big props to the GEICO General Insurance Co. for fucking me on my coverage. As Ron White would say, I’ll be telling that story every night until the lawsuit settles. Remind me to tell you later, when I’m not on battery power in the dark.

Luckily, I still had hurricane provisions left over from some other storm. I don’t remember which one. It might’ve been Ivan. At any rate, I had them. A small plastic flashlight, and enough batteries to run it for seventy or eighty years. No portable radio, though, except for my car, and it’s not really as portable as I’d like it to be.

The nano is definitely getting a workout this storm. I’ve been using the hell out of it. In fact, I think I’m going to plug it into the laptop and charge it back up to full. I’ve got more use for the iPod than I do for the laptop, so I don’t mind sucking the battery of one to charge the other.

I’ve had to turn my phone off. It has a full battery, and I’d like to keep it that way. It’s not a huge deal, because I have the car charger for it. It’s just that I would like to avoid sitting in my car with the engine running for a long time while it charges. Not that it would be such a bad deal though — at least my car has a heater.

It’s freezing in here. Did I mention that? Out of all the things I thought it would be after the storm passed, the last one I would’ve imagined is *very cold*.

I opened the back door to get some air in here. My neighbors are starting to wake up; I see flashlight beams sweep across the courtyard once in awhile, coming from other apartments. I felt bad for the people in building 903 yesterday — the wind set off their fire alarm, and noone had the key to turn it off. Yuck. What a nightmare. The last thing you want during a storm is a loud fire alarm klaxon in your ear for four hours. I don’t know what eventually turned it off. Probably the battery dying.

There are only two other people in my building. I don’t know where I’m going with that — I just think it’s funny. The reason it’s funny is that it’s not because everybody evacuated, it’s just because that’s how many people live here.

It’s 5:43am now. In about an hour, the sun will be up. I’m going to clean up the apartment and take the garbage down to the dumpster before then, so I can get out of here right at the crack of dawn and beat the rush to the FEMA tent. I must suckle at the teat of the federal government.