A whatsbetter.com update: they're up to $725. That's over $100 since I mentioned their predicament! I'd like to think I had something to do with it (or, I suppose more correctly, that you had something to do with it).

A happy confluence tomorrow, as I have my first summer Friday off and don't have to go on any sort of quiz related trip. I don't know what I'm going to do with all this extra, non-flying time. Well, I do know that I'm going to the Sox-Astros game tomorrow (weather permitting). I'm very happy to be there for Jimy Williams' homecoming. I wonder if he and Dan Duquette will get together for dinner while the 'Stros are in town?

The Astros are, for whatever reason, the first National League team I ever felt positive about. I think it had something to do with their ugly uniforms of the late 1970s and the double-whammy of Nolan Ryan and J. R. Richards. Can you imagine what that rotation would have been like if Richard didn't have his career cut short with circulatory problems?

Anyway, I was rooting pretty hard for Houston in 1986. I don't think it would have felt any better for all that to happen against them, though.

Then, of course, there's the whole Bagwell thing. I think the Sox would have screwed things up with him one way or another, and more than one person has argued that you can't judge the trade that sent him to Texas for Larry Andersen after the fact. Except that it was a pretty big screw job, and how can you ever rationalize that?

This is a lot more about the Astros than I thought I would write. Go figure.