[8:30 a.m.] People here at my hotel are doing the best they can without power. You need flashlights just to walk down the hall and stairwell. The wind was blowing so hard, it pushed off the plastic cover of my air conditioning unit. There’s still some hot water but the hotel manager says it’ll be gone in a heartbeat if everyone takes a shower this morning. Some people are just sitting in their rooms with the door open to the hallway, sitting in a chair and watching Wilma’s wrath outside from their window.

By the way, this morning, I saw the guy that walked into my room last night by mistake. He works for NPR, not the Weather Channel’s Web site, as I first thought. See if I give anything to NPR during the next pledge drive.

As I gathered my gear to head out into this sideways rain and wind, everyone milling in the lobby looked at me like I was nuts. “That’s what they pay me to do,” I told the hotel manager as he unlocked the front doors. To which someone replied “They pay you to do crazy things?”