Okay guys, I'm back. My armpits are like dead raw, too.
Through the miracle of spiritual dance, I aided Florida Power and Light in the restoration of our electricity. I believe we're the first ones in the city with power. We had to get all new equipment after Katrina destroyed our grid and left us powerless for 2 weeks. So, I suppose the new stuff held up enough to just warrant a quick fix.
We still have no cable, though. Our cable module is literally gone. I couldn't find it anywhere. I found the green plastic cover for it 100 ft. across the parking lot, but no actual hardware. All that's left of it is the big thick raw cable lines; the module was ripped from them.
Never in my life have I seen my city so ****ed. It looks as though the keys got the flooding, but we, who got directly hit, took all the wind damage. I believe we've had some tornadoes rip through. There were times when the wind speeds just seemed absolutely unreal. All I saw out of the window was pure white, and nothing more. Our sliding glass windows were bowing in, too. I don't know if any sustained wind could've knocked down our 30 ft. ficus tree. It's currently blocking our main exit. We were stuck for a day until pretty much the whole neighborhood joined together to work on removing a whole bunch of trees blocking an alternate exit.
The stupid news keeps showing all these other places, but they never bother to actually film here in Plantation. I think we have the most wind damage in all of florida. We are like an arbor city. The city prides itself on trees and we have an abundance. Everywhere is (or was, anyway) nice and green and lush. Although, with this hurricane, all of our trees look like they've come straight from an Arkansas winter. Totally bare, if not fallen over.
I spent today at my uncle's house trimming and cutting up his giant mango tree, which broke into millions of pieces and 6 or 7 huge limbs. 1 of those limbs and a few thousand of those piece are resting at the bottom of his pool.
We couldn't get to those, but we busted our asses taking care of the rest. Our final pile of crap from the one tree was about 7 feet tall and almost as large as the garage. Then, we had the 150-300 pound limbs to deal with. I cut what I could with ordinary garden clippers. We have to chainsaw them tommorow. It's pretty hard work trying to dislodge 350 pounds of solid wood from being stuck in a network of splintered limbs. I felt like He-Man, but without the power of greyskull.
Our park (yeah, filled with trees) is totally leveled. The only thing left standing is the gazebo (excuse any spelling error), which, evidently, they built up to code. A lot of people in my neighborhood and a lot of commercial buildings and offices have roof damage. Tiles gone, loose, dislodged. The white fences of almost all of the houses have been totally knocked over. People's screens are missing and/or destroyed. My neighbor's sliding glass door blew off the track and got sucked into his house. His screen and the screen's structure are badly damaged as well. I found a Stop sign below his condo, though (we're both on the second floor). I'm not sure if that had anything to do with it.
But, yeah... Not much to say other than to reiterate the fact that Hurricanes absolutely blow. Thank god we have the power back on, and thank god it's been nice and chilly since the hurricane departed.
Can't wait for the cable to return. 56k is a killer.
Have fun, everyone, and good luck to any other south floridians who're still stick in the mud.
(Let's ****in' move!)