Day 50 (Mon., Oct. 31)

When I woke up this morning I didn't want to go to work. I was not inspired at all. I think it was the fact that it took me an hour and 15 minutes to make the 10-mile drive from home to work. Man, in that case I should have jogged to the office. It would have taken me an hour and half, but at least I would have done something productive.

Well, not that being in a car for that long is a waste of time. I had a chance to work on some paperwork and make some important phone calls. But I also thought a lot. More on that at the end of the journal.

Once at the office, I was instructed to go to the animal shelter as we were doing a story about people who lost their pets during the hurricane. I was told to try to find someone who was being reunited w/ their pet. So, that's the mentality that I was going in w/.

After sitting at the shelter for about 30 minutes and making a bunch of photos that were not cool at all, a man walked in. He was there to pick up his lost dog. Someone from the shelter had called him and told him his dog had been found. It was pretty easy to spot the dog and to find him, I mean how many Maltese dogs w/o teeth can there be in Hollywood, Fla.?

After briefly talking to the man, his dog was brought to him and I shot the photo below. Then after recognizing the dog, the doggy was taken back for some final check-ups. That's when I found out about Salvatore Simone.

Mr. Simone, a 93-year-old man, is a WWII veteran and is a really tough man I was told by the man who was picking up the dog. Then he mentioned that Mr. Simone has been crying like a baby ever since the doggy went missing after a fence in their backyard was blown off by the hurricane.

That's when the journalist bell ran in my head.

I asked the man if it would be cool to trail him back to the home because I thought it would make a great photo to see the reunion. So, there we went off to their Hollywood home where the old man was eagerly awaiting the arrival of his companion of 15 years.

Wow! What a compelling story. Right?

This is the living sample of how you can make something good out of what could be a boring assignment. I could have settled for the image of the guy smiling and happy at the shelter. But, I took it a step further by asking all the right questions. It's good to be nosy.

During our trek from the shelter to the house, I called up the Sun-Sentinel reporter and my boss to tell them about my findings. Quickly, the reporter was sent out to the scene and we gave real meaning to this story. It's running front page as our many story in our Local section tomorrow. See? This story would have been buried on page 6, but we were able to jump it to the main. Woohoo!!

As soon I was done w/ the editing process of the doggy photo, I was sent out to another assignment. This time I was headed to a mobile home in Davie. This place got hit very hard by the hurricane and I was assigned to find people who were being evicted from the unsafe mobile homes. It wasn't a pretty sight.

The bedroom on this home became part of the yard as the strong wind took a wall and roof off of it.

From inside of what remained of her 5-year-old son's bedroom, Yaneth Zubieta can be seen putting up a tarp. Rain is expected in the next couple of days and people are scrambling to cover what's left of their homes.

Silvester Galboza helped fix the floor on the mobile home of a neighbor. After all, he is a construction worker who is temporarily out of work because of the hurricane.

It has been a week since Wilma came through and changed many lives. Things are slowly getting back to normal, but not quite. It's hard as many people are still w/o power. Traffic signals are still down. Halloween this year was different around here.

Speaking of Halloween. Remember how I was talking about my time to think on the bumper-to-bumper traffic to work this morning?

I thought a lot about how Halloween has been a really cool occasion the years past. It deteriorated last year when I spent it dodging heavy rain on Sixth Street in Austin. The past couple of years have been really cool because I have been able to come up w/ some unique costumes. All the costumes that I have worn in the past five years have been hand-made by me. This year, since I have been working a lot w/ Wilma coverage, I didn't have the energy, nor the time to put together a costume. Although I had a great idea for one.

I was going to make a Fred Flintstone costume and wear a sign that would read: "I divorced Wilma because she's such a b-----h!"

That would have made a lot of sense around here these days, but Halloween lost its excitement because of the hurricane.

Lastly, one of the things that I thought about was about how much things have changed since last year. A year ago today I was sporting a brand new hole on my tongue as I decided to be crazy by piercing it. It was quite an accomplishment because I am not a fan of stuff like that. It reminds me of two weeks ago when I got on the thrill ride on the Stratosphere in Vegas against my fear of heights. Wow, I guess I am becoming more daring as I get old.

Last year I enjoyed my first visit to University of Texas in Austin. I never dreamed that a year later I would be covering a hurricane in Florida. Nice!

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