The work week ended, not with a bang, but a whimper. I was sick earlier this week and now Anne is showing the same symptoms that I had. I count myself fortunate that I was sick during the work week and that I have paid sick leave. It looks like Anne will be sick over the weekend, so it probably doesn’t matter that she has no sick leave. She could claim workman’s comp, or tell the sub-scheduler on Monday that she brought “some work” home with her, but since I am the vector for this mini-epidemic that probably won’t work well.

Work was more subdued this morning then it was after Wednesday night’s victory. I guess that is the difference between winning and losing. Today is a travel day, so there is no game today. Tomorrow the Cardinals and the Rangers play game three of the World Series in Arlington, TX. They are tied 1-1. I never made it inside the Ranger’s previous stadium, passing by it on the highway seemed close enough. I did tour their current stadium. Like Busch, it is built in the brickyard style, but unlike Busch it is closed in on itself, like a brick oven. No breeze ever wafts through it on a hot August night. That is why it is known as the hottest stadium in baseball and that has nothing to do with the Ranger’s hitting.

On Sunday, there will be two Saint Louis teams in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area. The Cards will be playing game four and the Rams will be playing the Cowboys. Similarly, last Sunday, the Cardinals were playing the Brewers in Milwaukee, while the Rams were playing the Packers in neighboring Green Bay. The Cards clinched the pennant, while the Rams lost. I would be glad to see the Rams take another knee as prelude to another Cardinal victory this Sunday. It seems like a fair trade, Saint Louis loves its baseball and everyone in Texas always cares more about football than baseball.

I had lunch today with Dan from work and the Perma-Bear. I got to drive and show off the Prius to them both. Over the summer, both the Perma-Bear and I made two different, but both quite green energy investments. I bought the hybrid and he had a home geo-thermal heating/cooling system installed. Between the two, I think that his geo-thermal system was both the smarter and greener investment. A while back, the Perma-Bear and I made a bet, a gentlemen’s agreement. He bet that gas at the pump (in Saint Louis) would hit $2 before it hit $5. I disagreed. He reminded me of this wager after I bought the Prius. Last month, when we spoke with our broker, I asked Pat about this bet. Usually quite loquacious, he fell silent for a while and thought. Finally, he answered with a no. “For gas to hit $2, oil would have to hit $50. I just don’t see that happening. Of the 1.2 billion Chinese, 300 million of them drive cars …”

We have another wager that is marked with a yellow Post-It on my cubical wall. It says that I am to ask him about my Starbuck’s index a year from now. The Perma-Bear believes that the Great Recession is really the Great Depression II and that just fearing a double-dip recession is being wildly optimistic. That’s fine, everyman’s entitled to his opinion, but then he brought up a PBS show on Chernobyl, twenty-five years after. Radiation has scoured mankind for miles around the accident site. Wolves and wildlife have returned. Soviet era buildings have decayed. Mankind’s apocalypse drawn real, abet on a scale smaller than the proverbial end of days. Fortunately, we glided silently into my parking place, before the final end drew too much nearer.