All the streetlights are still out except for a handful. Theres the 4-way stop rule at all intersections but half the people don't give a shit. You just have to go out driving and hope you don't get killed at the intersections. Trees and streetlights are still in the roads. Curfew was still enforced last night. They're going to 're-evaluate' it today. They finally bumped it up to 9:00 for our county. It was at 7:00. If a cop sees you out after curfew you get arrested. Thursday night there were 46 people thrown in jail for being out after curfew.

Gas has been a MAJOR FUCKING ISSUE. The lines have been insane. I was lucky enough to have my gas last me till yesterday. I only had to wait in line for a half hour. Stan (one of my bosses) went out for gas on Wed. He started sitting in line at 4:00pm until 10:00pm when the cops made everyone go home. Curfew was at 7:00 at the time but they let people stand in line for gas till 10:00. He stood in line for 6 hours and came back empty handed. It was a god-send to have Jeff and the other partners watching out for everyone. It could have been so much worse.

Wednesday afternoon I was sent out to go find generators. After searching around I heard that a Home Depot was open and had just gotten a truck of generators. I stood in the 'generator line' for 3 hours. Its funny, while in line for that long you start to form little cliques. Some guy heard that I had candles in my car. He said he'd trade for something so we both went to our cars and bartered simple goods -the others held our spot in line. Ended up trading 4 candles for a bag of ice. We both felt like we made out like bandits. It was like living in a 3rd world country. Ice was extremely hard to find. I had grabbed up the last of the candles at Target on Tuesday morning cause it was the only place open. It was dark as hell in there and the shelves were completely bare. You had to grab anything you could find, pay for cash, and get the hell out. Anyway, when I got my generators at Home Depot, there were 23 left, and way more than 23 people behind me. Jeff had gotten there about 20min before I got to the end of the line, so we were able to each get one cause we had different last names (1 generator per family). People were visibly pissed.

We were able to ration out enough gas from siphoning our cars to fill up Stans car so he could leave for Orlando early Thursday morning to go find gas out there. Someone had to go to Orlando because even if you got in line early over here, there was a $20 limit. So everyone gave him empty gas cans to take with him so we could ration off of each other for those who needed it in their cars and to power the generators. At that time the city was saying no one would get power till Nov.22nd. People were freaking out.

So we got the generators running at the shop so everyone could meet up and have hot coffee and charge their cell phones. Communication was extremely hard. Even if you had power in your cell phone, no voice calls would work. You had to re-send the same text message for about 3 minutes before it would go through. Its amazing how hot coffee and a charged cell phone is taken for granted. Its common knowledge that gas is important, but you dont fully understand the concept until your whole community has none. My car has been a rolling survival unit for the past week. The trunk is filled with batteries, candles, beef jerky, water, granola bars, cooler with ice, cranberry juice, and a huge bottle of Stoli. I finally got power last night. Jeff had gotten power at his house Friday, so he let me stay with him over the weekend. On Saturday I actually had a cold soda and a hot hamburger. It was beautiful.

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