So Katie headed out on her Girl Scout camping trip late this afternoon. After we dropped her off, the rest of the family headed out to Schaumburg where we visited Play It Again Sports and acquired a softball catcher's mitt. Katie can use this when she is catching this fall. (We measured it against Gretchen's hand, which is approximately the same size.) The rest of the team is welcome to use it when they are catching. We'll see how this goes tomorrow during practice.

This was followed by dinner at Olive Garden, which was quite good, although Julie ate very little of her kids' meal, but substantially more of breadsticks and chocolate milk. Nothing goes together quite as well as a garlic breadstick and chocolate milk, I guess.

I went back to work to try to hunt down a bug that has -- in the absence of the person who has complained about it -- completely vanished. *sigh*

And I followed the end of the Cardinals game on the ESPN website. The Cards were leading 11-3 going to the bottom of the eighth. They were leading 11-8 going to the bottom of the ninth. Then they gave up two runs to the Pirates without the Pirates actually having to get a hit. Happily, the Pirates did not get a hit before the inning ended, and the Cards ended up winning 11-10.

I understand that there will be a new pitcher in the bullpen tomorrow, yesterday's call up (who was largely responsible for the five runs in the eighth) having been sent back to Memphis tonight. I feel rather sorry for him.