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Tampa Bay The Current Situation

If you’re in crisis on Christmas, remember 211 and 988

As the lyrics say, all is supposed to be merry and bright during the holidays, but there are times when life has other plans. It’s been a while since I’ve faced a “Long Dark Christmas of the Soul,” but it has happened, and “merry” and “bright” were not words I’d use to describe that time.

If you’re in the Tampa Bay area and things for you are far from merry and bright, take advantage of First Contact (formerly 211 Tampa Bay Cares).

First Contact originated in the 1970s as the 2-1-1 Helpline, a crisis intervention hotline in Pinellas County, that offered support to individuals facing challenges like loneliness and thoughts of suicide. Over the years, it merged with the United Way’s Information and Referral line and evolved into a comprehensive resource for crisis intervention, family support, and referral services throughout the Tampa Bay region and across the state of Florida.

211 is a three-digit phone number that will connect you to information and referral services to health, human, and social service organizations. If you’re in the Tampa Bay area, that service is First Contact, but if you’re elsewhere, it will connect you to the equivalent services in your area.

988 is a three-digit number that will connect you to a suicide and crisis lifeline. If you are in crisis or experiencing thoughts of suicide, call 988!

You can dial 988 to receive support and resources for thoughts of suicide, mental health or substance use crisis, or any other kind of emotional distress.


Here’s hoping that your holidays are safe and happy. If they’re not, please take advantage of 211 and 988 — that’s what they’re there for.

Categories
It Happened to Me Tampa Bay

Last Friday evening at Davis Islands

Joey de Villa and Anitra Pavka, in front of a dock on Davis Islands at twilight, with Tampa Bay in the background.
Me and Anitra at a Christmas party on Davis Islands last Friday evening.
Categories
Florida Florida of the Day funny Tampa Bay

Headline of the day

Wfla.com headline with picture of steak on grill: “St. Pete Steakhouse to be Transformed Into Funeral Home.”

It would be even more funny and frightening is the transformation was going the other way.

(By the way, here’s the article.)

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Florida It Happened to Me Tampa Bay The Current Situation

Hurricane Milton post #14: Good thing I didn’t put away the generator!

As Murphy’s Law would have it, moments after posting yesterday that I hadn’t yet put away our generator just in case the repairs to our neighborhood power didn’t stick…

…the power went out.

Shortly after that, our poor FedEx guy dropped off this heavy beast at our front door. I would have helped him, but I was in our back yard starting up the generator:

Just about every “battery generator” (a strange misnomer) went on sale during the period between Hurricanes Helene and Milton. EcoFlow seems to be the current favorite with both Wirecutter and a lot of its users, and they had a good package deal, so I ordered one. Alas, it arraived after Milton.

This is the Delta Pro, which stores 3600 watt-hours of energy, charges off a wall outlet, car “cigarette lighter” outlet, or solar panels. The package deal includes a 400 watt solar panel and a smaller power station, the River, whose job will be to power a CPAP and bedroom fan during power outages.

I’m charging the beast as I write this. More reports later, especially if I end up needing to use it!

Categories
Florida It Happened to Me Tampa Bay The Current Situation

Hurricane Milton post #13: I haven’t put away the generator yet

Here’s “Lil’ Red,” a generator we bought from a friend of the family a few years back, which I have lovingly maintained for the past couple of years. We finally put it to use during Hurricane Milton to keep the fridge and freezer cold, to power cooking appliances and provide that tiny bit of power that our gas-powered tankless water heater needs, and to power wifi (our Frontier fiber connection stayed up almost the entire time) and laptops and charge phones.

I haven’t put Lil’ Red away just yet because no power restoration is perfect. We got power back on Saturday afternoon, but lost it later that evening due to problems with a nearby tree falling on a power line. We’ve got it back Sunday afternoon, but there’ve been reports of occasional hours-long outages, which is understandable considering the scope of Milton’s damage. I’ll put it away this weekend after first running the engine dry to remove the remaining gasoline — gas degrades over time, and storing a generator with gas in the tank is asking for a lot of cleaning and repair later.

I’m also looking at this bad boy pictured above for future use, as this one can be hooked up to our natural gas line, and I’d like to be able to use the additional watts to run a couple of fans and recharge our EcoFlow power station

Categories
Florida It Happened to Me Tampa Bay The Current Situation

Hurricane Milton post #12: You don’t need a drone, just a pole and a phone!

Tap to view at full size.

A day or two after Hurricane Milton tore its way through town, someone posted on the local Facebook groups offering their services to fly a drone over your house to check for roof damage — for $75.00.

You can also do what I did and get roughly the same effect for FREE with your smartphone and a long pole or board, as pictured in this post.

Tap to view at full size.

I write mobile apps for fun, and I keep a couple of old Android phones handy, as they have all sorts of uses, such as hurricane FM radios (I’ll write about this in a later post) and cameras that I don’t feel too bad about putting at risk.

So I took one of my old Androids — a Moto x4, which was a great mid-range phone that offered a lot of bang for the buck back in 2017 — and securely taped it to a long slat from a the renovation project from when we moved in. I knew it would come in handy someday.

You might be tempted to use duct tape, but I figured that for a half-hour’s use, the annoyance of having to peel it off the phone wasn’t worth it. I used masking tape from the spot in our utility closet that I call the “attach things to other things shelf” (if you don’t have one, you might want to establish one).

Tape it in a way so that you can use the controls on your phone’s “camera” app, set it to video, start recording, and raise the pole! You can extend the viewing angle and reach by standing on a ladder.

Here’s a sample from my recordings:

Categories
Florida It Happened to Me Tampa Bay The Current Situation

Hurricane Milton post #11: Clean-up

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A good chunk of today was devoted to cleaning up all the tree and plant debris left in Milton’s wake. I’m grateful to have to do it — the canopy of trees over our ’hood probably absorbed a lot of the hurricane’s energy and blunted the force that would’ve been applied to us and our homes.

Pictured above: me — below: Anitra!

Tap to view at full size.