Our intrepid blogger, Tom Barlow, is stuck out in Ohio with no power. This is day four of his odyssey. He is "liveblogging" his ordeal for us from his Blackberry now that it has gone on long enough to qualify as an ordeal. What would you do without power? Would your livelihood suffer?

Here's what Tom has to say:

September 18, 8:30 pm
In a power outage, you quickly become a slave to the food in your refrigerator. Your goal- don't let perishables spoil, keep frozen foods frozen. You don't even see it as food; it's you money there, turning brown and fuzzy.

First, you pursue bags of ice, the vague rumors of ice, like. Wall Street chasing a bailout.

I was late to the game when our power went out, and by the time I joined the chase there was nothing left except empty ice cases and clerks still in shock from the onslaught.

Iceless, my wife and I daringly continued to dine from our increasingly gamey fridge for a couple of days, passing candidate food back and forth to share olfactory opinions.

New Orleans residents all did better this hurricane, including the dogs and cats. What happened last time around during Katrina to animals and their owners inspired some great changes.

During Katrina animals weren't allowed in shelters or buses leaving town. That gave pet owners two awful options: abandon their animals or wait out the storm with them. Thousands of dogs and cats were abandoned. Many drowned. A lucky few were plucked from top shelves or chained inside houses. Saddest of all, some people who stayed to protect and comfort their dogs ended up dying alongside them.

After Katrina emergency workers owned up to the idea that since pets have become part of people's families, they better come up with a better plan than just leaving pets behind. In 2006 the federal Pet Evacuation and Standards Act required disaster plans to "address the needs of individuals with household pets and service animals following a major disaster or emergency."

This time around it seemed to have worked. Petfinder.com, which is kind of like an eBay for homeless animals, polled the local rescue groups and found things went off pretty well. Small animals were just allowed on the evacuation buses, the Christian Science Monitor reports. Officials ordered up 150 semi-trucks to carry out the bigger dogs, the Kansas City Star reports. When people checked in, they would also check in their dogs, then get a tracking bracelet. The dogs' temporary shelters were next to human shelters so families could visit.

Despite the massive force that was Gustav, New Orleans avoided the brunt much better than expected, which is good news for the economy. Well, better news, anyway. Storms of this size by definition have an impact on the economy.

Even though damages to homes, infrastructure and energy production won't be known until later this week, several sources have already shifted their economic forecasts toward the positive.

Consumers across the board will be glad to hear that natural gas futures have already dropped slightly, as well as gasoline prices and the cost for natural gas in the month of October.

On Monday, with Tropical Storm Fay bearing down on southern Florida, Norwegian Cruise Line decided it would avoid danger by starting a four-day cruise on the Norwegian Sky about two hours early. Instead of leaving Miami at 5 pm, it would leave at 3 pm.

Fay may have been a bust, but you can see disaster coming here. And this cruise departure was indeed a bit of a train wreck. A dozen people got left at the dock.

On its website, NCL posted an announcement of its revised sailing plan at 9:30am, less than six hours before the lines were to be cast off. But some passengers were already en route from other states by then and had no inkling of the revision. Norwegian reps also claim the company tried calling as many passengers as it could reach.