That's a map of the North Miami area, as provided by FPL. Each of those red triangles represents a home without power, and that's only the small section I cut for this post. South Florida doesn't look like it has freckles, it looks like it has third degree burns, with no relief in sight. [Edit: The entire Miami-Dade County map is a PDF located here.]

It's really disheartening, rushing home from the office and leaving work half-done, trying to beat the darkness. I always start to get my hopes up when I exit I-95, thinking that maybe today I'll see that my neighbors have put away the orange extension cord they are using to share a generator across my street. And then I get home, and my porch light is still dark. It's difficult to stay focused and optimistic when you know you'll be spending another night sweating in the darkness.

Even among the people who have their major services back an inescapable fatigue has set in. Many of my friends and co-workers are still too out of sorts from the disrupted routine to want to do much of anything. Some of this, I'm sure, is traffic related, as it is damned close to impossible to get anywhere with all the funky traffic signals and stressed-out drivers. And some of it is the lack of reliable information, movie theaters and restaurants still advertised as open while they are powerless. Some is undeniably the result of the constant — and largely necessary — 24/7 post-storm news assault: children electrocuted, another family asphyxiated by carbon monoxide from a generator exhaust, traffic fatalities from malfunctioning lights, even a supply of emergency bottled water that turned out to contain toxic algae. You can't escape Wilma, and after a while she just sucks the life from you.

When I look out my window I see the lights of Barry University, just a few blocks and a world away. And here I am, typing by candlelight in my increasingly disgusting house, cooled only by a USB-powered fan, trying to keep the hope alive that maybe tomorrow will be my day.