New Jersey college students whose education has been disrupted by Hurricane Katrina have been offered "visiting student" status by Rutgers University. Details here. For a roundup of colleges affected by Katrina, including an emergency website for Tulane, read this story in Inside Higher Ed.

The price of regular gasoline went from $2.70 to $2.80 this afternoon, at the Harrison Road Exxon Station, in the time it took to fill the Barista’s gas tank. The attendant said we got the lower price. Click for larger image.

People are offering room to Katrina refugees in their Brooklyn and Queens apartments. Anyone in Baristaville putting out the word?

(Thanks, Chris Greeder, for alerting us.)

The Barista had her sticker shock two weeks ago, when she first encountered $3/gallon gas in California. Didn’t take Baristaville too long to catch up. A reader informs us that gas now costs $3.19 in Watchung Plaza, and others have spotted $3 gas elsewhere. Is this price gouging from Hurricane Katrina (as one reader suggests) or just a taste of things to come? Tell your neighbors where the cheap pumps are. Thanks to Miss Martta, who sent the picture.

UPDATE: Eric B. writes to tell us that the price of gas at Watchung Plaza is now $3.34 — up 15 cents in the last 18 hours.

The teal-colored Montclair Adult School catalogues go out in the mail today, but you don’t have to wait for one to show up on your front porch. The entire catalogue is now online and, in a significant upgrade from previous years, you can actually register online and find out whether you got a spot.

Featured classes this semester include a lecture by Montclair Makeup Mistress Bobbi Brown ($10, Nov. 2) and Newark mayoral wannabe and Cory Booker ($10, Oct. 19). As for the usual stuff — from creative writing to clay — it’s all there, along with classes ranging from Buddhism to Texas Hold Em.

You can browse the site now, but registration doesn’t start until midnight. Go. Learn something.

Anybody else hooked?

(Cartoon courtesy HumorInk of Montclair)

   Apparently, it’s Back-to-School Month for New Jersey’s department of Homeland Security, which urges everybody to be on the lookout for unattended backpacks.

We guess, given the discombobulation that usually attends the first week back in school, in addition to the gas masks at Bloomfield High School, we’ll need K-9 units in every Staples, school and front hallway in Baristaville to protect us against errant backpacks. Just don’t tell the kids: if they start calling in every stray backpack as a bomb scare, they’ll spend the entire month marching outside in single file.

Instead of demonizing backpacks maybe we should… um… demonize backpacks? How about a national campaign against kids carrying 75 pounds of books on their backs every day?

A certain cyclist we know happened on the website of the Fast and Fabulous Club, an association of gay and lesbian bicyclists out of New York. They have added a new phrase to the bicycling lexicon, which we find charming. On their cue sheets, instead of writing GS ("go straight") at an intersection, they prefer GF ("gaily forward.") We think that’s awfully clever.

By the way, Fast and Fabulous has 10 New Jersey bike tours on its website, including a "Shop til you drop at IKEA" ride. They don’t say how you bring the Rolig chair or Lillehammer bed home, though.

It’s back-to-school shopping time for Bloomfield High School, where construction goes on and on and on….  (If you don’t get the joke, here’s your background reading).

By the way, school starts next Tuesday for Glen Ridge, next Wednesday for Bloomfield and Montclair.