Day 1: The Beginning Of The End

Sunday
Feb 8, 2009

I've spent over 20 years working for FPL in South Florida, running power lines and repairing transformers. Good honest work, no doubt, and it can get quite hellish, especially after a hurricane rips through the state, toppling trees and knocking over poles. I've spent the last 10 days in Kentucky, courtesy of FEMA, overseeing a massive restoration project that has been a cold miserable son a bitch to preside over. I can't wait to get back home and walk outside without the snot freezing my nostrils shut.

My wife, Julia, is currently in Houston. She's a junior partner for a law firm in West Palm Beach. It's one of those firms that specializes in real estate and the like, none of that cool John Grisham shit for her. Most times when she tells me about her job I'm lost by the third sentence. Even she admits it's pretty dry stuff, but between the two of us we pull in good money and haven't had to go without. She's due back in West Palm by Thursday, I'm hoping to be right behind her before the weekend hits. Our kids, Joey Jr. (age 9) and Suzette (age 6) are being watched Julia's mother Abigail (age 68). Ha, she'd kill me for mentioning her real age.

Abigail has been staying with the kids at our house in Wellington during the week, then taking them down to her condo in Key Largo for the weekend. No-one's complaining down there, that's for sure. Kid's love their Grammy and the feelings go both ways. Plus Junior loves the beach and Key Largo's got plenty of beach side property, Grammy's included.

My name is Joseph Daniel Baker, I'm 42 years old, and this is my attempt to start an e-journal. For Christmas I got this cool as hell Blueberry, or whatever the hell they call it, and I've finally figured out how to do more than shoot funny emails to my buddies and check sports scores with this crazy thing. I used to write as a kid, and Julia keeps pushing me to do it again, says it will be therapeutic. I don't know why I need therapy, but I figure I got nothing to lose at this point, so here I go.

We're almost finished running power to this little town called Pleasureville, a town to the Northwest of Lexington, with a population that may exceed a thousand residents in the next 10 years. It's a town full of hard working people, not much money there, but the people seem mostly like good folks. Food banks have been keeping them fed, and shelters in Frankfort have taken in many of the people who would have froze to death were it not for the kindness of strangers. There's still quite a few 'good ole boys' that insisted on staying behind, they've been burning through their firewood at an alarming rate, but as long as they've got cold beer and warm Spam they seem to be pretty well adjusted. Most of them have been helping my team clean up debris in the roads so we can get our trucks where they need to be for the power restoration.

I can't wait to get back home. This cold weather reminds me of why I live in Florida. Wife's calling me. Hope I can take this call without losing what I've written.

-Joe