Damn. I feel your pain man. At least it's only mainly inconvenient. Poor food, poor living conditions. I definitely empathize. I have yet to take all my furniture off blocks from Gustav. Any word on when to expect power? That'll be the kicker that drives everything else. With water pressure low, are you on a boil order? Is it safe to use sewage? One of the main concerns here after Gustav was that only 1/10th of the lift stations were working for several days. You could use the bathroom, but only flush if you NEEDED to. Ahem. Gross. As to power, is it the main grid? Or lots of downed lines. Obviously, the main grid is less of a problem. Fix a few lines, masses of houses come online. If it's the individual lines, it could take significantly more time. Fix a few lines, a few houses come online.

As far as classes go, expect skeleton crews at best. I doubt much, if any, teaching will be going on. I think the main reason to start classes earlier rather than later is to restore some semblance of normalcy. The faster you get back to life, the less time you have to spend thinking about what's going on around you. That's a good thing. After Katrina I had to take nerve pills for the first, and hopefully last, time in my life. I didn't FEEL stressed out, but for some weird reason my mouth would simply refuse to cooperate when talking. It was like my tongue was turning into a solid and my lips would pull into an uncontrollable snarl. Weird stuff. After a couple weeks on an SSRI (Lexapro) I was back to normal.

It'll get back to normal. I promise. Stores will reopen as soon as they get power and the people needed to operate. Restaurants will do the same. For the people that live in more coastal areas, things are going to be a lot tougher. They too, will get back to normal, but it'll take a lot more time and a lot more work.