Nolan Ryan, Astros franchise icon and co-owner of two of the team's minor league franchises, today exited his personal services contract a year early to assume the team president position offered by the Texas Rangers. Ryan will oversee the daily operations of the floundering Arlington-based team, working with mercurial owner Tom Hicks. The fate of his owner's stake in the minor league affiliates is up for debate, but the assumption is that they will remain......

Good morning, Houston. How many of you knew what Monday was? Anyone? Anyone? That's right: It was the 220th anniversary of the signing of the United States Constitution. To mark the anniversary, the nation had a little holiday, Constitution Day — but how many people actually knew about it? Not many, apparently: Though federal law says students at public high schools should be taught about Constitution Day, a recent survey of students found that......

Good morning, Houston. Weather got you down? Here's a fun story to lighten your mood: drunk astronauts. A report on astronaut mental health (undertaken after the infamous Lisa Nowak incident) revealed that NASA has sent astronauts into space totally sloshed. This happened in spite of the fact that they put a ban on alcohol consumption at least 12 hours before launch. Oops. We hope they're not too hard on the astronauts. After all, it's......

Finally! After sixteen straight weeks of increases, gasoline prices have finally dropped across Texas. That's not to stay it still won't cost you $60 or $70 to fill up your gas-guzzling SUV though, because they've only dropped to an average of $3.05 in 11 Texas cities. On the bright side, that's three cents down from last week and still 14 cents below the national average. Gas prices are still about a dollar higher than they......

After Friday night's 4-1 loss to the Milwaukee Brewers, the Houston Astros have decided to purchase the contract of Triple A Round Rock star, Hunter Pence. Pence, who exploded onto the scene in Spring Training with a .571 batting average in 19 games, has continued his dominance at Round Rock and is currently batting .341 with three home runs with 19 RBI through 22 games. Pence will make his MLB debut Saturday night as......

Recently, Houstonist had been thinking about how it seems a long time since we had any Lisa Nowak-related news. And then, voila! — a Florida judge agreed to unseal certain documents related to the case of the lovelorn astronaut, and now we know some of the stuff she was carrying in her car when she made her infamous cross-country trip to intercept a romantic rival at the Orlando airport. Among the items in her possession:......

Good morning, Houston. If the thought of teeing off atop a downtown skyscraper gets you going, here's some excellent news: For the next week, you'll have the chance! It's part of The Glenlivet City Links, a 9-hole golf course and clubhouse that's touring seven U.S. cities. In Houston, the City Links — which includes a free course, a virtual driving range and a lounge — is set up on the 50th floor of Three......

So the question of what would happen to astronaut Lisa Nowak when her 30-day leave from NASA was over is answered: Nowak is now a former astronaut. Nowak, who is a Navy captain, will return to the military; NASA said the dismissal has nothing to do with her guilt or innocence on charges of trying to kidnap her romantic rival, but rather with the fact that the agency doesn't have the administrative system needed to......

Good morning, Houston. Did you enjoy a big oyster dinner over the weekend? Might want to stay close to the toilet: The FDA is advising people to steer clear of oysters from San Antonio Bay, about 60 miles northeast of Corpus Christi, after more than two dozen people became ill from eating them last month. The people developed nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and other nasty symptoms; the oyster bed has been shut down pending an......

Remember when gas was cheap? No, we're not talking about 10 years ago — we're referring to earlier this year, when the price of a gallon dipped well below $2 at some stations around town. Well, keep that in mind: It'll help you deal with shelling out $2 and change at the pump these days. According to AAA Texas, gas prices statewide rose for the second straight week this week, settling at an average......

Local Artist Hosts Sacred Heart Series Showing @ Kobain William K. Stidham came to painting after a bruising experience in trying to get his contemporary fiction novel published. Having spent 4 years in writing, editing, choosing an agent,more editing, then shopping publishing houses and hitting a dead end... William decided to pick up a watercolor kit from the local Walgreen's in order to do something different with his creative energy. His latest series, Sacred......

Here's another of those things that'll make us all proud to be Houstonians: According to an environmental research group, three of the five most-polluting U.S. refineries are in the Houston area. We guess our old line to cover for our pollution problem — "That's the smell of money!" — won't quite cut it anymore. According to the Enrivonmental Integrity Project, BP's Texas City refinery, Exxon Mobil's refinery in Baytown and the Lyondell-Citgo plant in Houston......

Speaking of things you don't hear about every day — we were, weren't we? — the Coast Guard is continuing its search today for a man who went overboard from a Carnival cruise ship in the Gulf of Mexico this weekend. A passenger on the Carnival Conquest reported seeing the man, 42, fall from a cabin balcony at about 11 p.m. Saturday, near the end of the ship's week-long Caribbean cruise. The ship was......

Texas has lost a legend in Freddy Fender, who lost his battle with lung cancer this weekend at the age of 69, at his home in Corpus Christi, with his family by his side. Baldemar Huerta, now known to the world as Freddy Fender, was born in 1937 in San Benito, Texas in "The Valley", the son of migrant workers. He made his first radio appearance at the age of 10 in Harlingen. Regionally,......

If you like H-E-B and you live in Pearland, you're going to love this: Developers announced yesterday that construction on a huge new retail center anchored by an oversized H-E-B will begin this fall at Highway 288 and FM 518. The 600,000-square-foot center will be adjacent to Shadow Creek Ranch, which you may remember from the billboards calling it the fastest-growing master-planned community in the "Houston-Pearland Metroplex." (Until we saw those ads, we thought the......

Everybody get ready to brag to your out-of-town friends again: For the second week, Houston has the most expensive gasoline in the state. The weekly AAA Texas gas-price survey found the average cost of a gallon of unleaded in Houston went up 4 cents this week, to $2.93 a gallon. That's 8 cents more than the statewide average of $2.85, up about 5 cents over last week and 62 cents over last year's average. The......

Somehow we missed another of Houston's national top 10 list appearances: According to the folks at Old Spice, Houston is the ninth sweatiest city in the U.S. We suppose that explains the smell. Really, people, use some deodorant! The study estimated the amount of sweat a person of average height and weight produces walking around outdoors for an hour in a city's average high summer temperature, then ranked 100 cities based on the findings. According......

So this long weekend is chock full of holidays: National Build a Scarecrow Day tomorrow, Visitation of the Virgin Mary Day on Sunday, Stay Out of the Sun Day on Monday and National Tom Sawyer Fence-Painting Day on Tuesday — not to mention that July is National Baked Beans Month. We know everyone is anxious to hit the road and celebrate scarecrows/virgins/the sun/fences/beans, but when you do, you can expect to pay more for gas.......

That's right - believe it or not there is actually a lot of surfing to be had off Texas' coastal waters. Tonight is your chance to see the slick moves of how three Texas women ride the curl off the Mexican coast. Tex2Mex is a film by Rindy Jones who has been traveling in and surfing Mexico for over the past decade. While at Surfside one day after a chance meeting with local Houston......

From the "creepy ex-boyfriend" file comes the story of a Corpus Christi woman who got a severed human finger in the mail from her old flame, who lives in Spring. We'll leave you a moment to process whatever off-color jokes may come to mind. Finished? Good. The 32-year-old woman had filed for an emergency protective order against her ex last week, and police say he mailed the finger on Friday along with a threatening letter......

Houston, we have liftoff! The Astros and ESPN are reporting that Roger Clemens' retirement will be officially put on hold — again — much to the dismay of batters and Yankee, Ranger and Red Sox fans. Clemens will be paid a pro-rated salary of $22 million, so when he returns to the Astros around June 22, he'll get just under $13 million for the rest of year — approximately $3.25 million each month of......

Good news if you're heading out of town this weekend: Gas prices in Texas dropped again this week, ending a an average of $2.79 a gallon for regular unleaded, down 6 cents from last week. Texas remains below the national average price of $2.86, which is also down 6 cents from last week, according to AAA Texas. Based on reports from HoustonGasPrices.com, the cheapest gallon in town now is $2.69 at the Valero station......

Gas prices jumped in Texas this week on concerns over possible summer gas shortages, landing at an average $2.59 per gallon statewide, the weekly AAA Texas gas price survey says. That's 11 cents higher than last week and 45 cents higher than this time last year, and it's just a penny under the national average of $2.60 a gallon. Houston is ahead of the state and national averages, with a local average gas price of......

H-E-B said yesterday it's recalling its entire baby food line after customers in Houston and Corpus Christi reported they found pieces of glass in jars of peas, carrots and applesauce. The food, which was removed from shelves statewide, will be shipped back to the quality-assurance lab for testing. "Though these reports have been isolated to just a few products in the H-E-B baby food line, as a company, we are committed to absolute and complete......

Gas prices in Texas fell for the fourth week in a row this week, according to AAA Texas. The statewide average for self-serve unleaded gas this week is $2.15 a gallon, down 4 cents from last week. That's 10 cents less than the national average of $2.25 for the week, which is down 2 cents from last week. The most expensive gas in the state, $2.18 a gallon, is in the Galveston-Texas City area this......

Bill Simmons needs a lesson on how to hate on Houston. On the ESPN Page 2 site, Bill writes in Welcome to the Super Bowl:" Maybe Houston doesn't suck any more or less than 20 other major cities, and maybe the people are friendly and likable, but the fact remains, you would never come here for any reason, other than these three: (1) For work. (2) To gain weight. (3) To get shot. We don't......

Two endangered whales were sighted in Corpus Christi Bay, far from their usual winter hangout High winds today caused flights to be delayed at Bush Intercontinental Airport Employees at a northwest Harris County dump-truck factory found a colleague dead inside a hydraulic winch early this morning The Astros signed shortstop Adam Everett to a one-year, $1.9 million deal TxDOT: Flooding on the South Loop during Monday's rains wasn't our fault!......

Longtime weathercaster Roland Galvan, formerly on the air in Houston, died Sunday in San Antonio after suffering from liver problems for about two years. While he was attending college at Trinity University in San Antonio, Galvan got a job at a local TV station as a technician, photographer and news producer. He later trained to be a weatherman and ended up working for stations across the country: in Beaumont and Houston, then San Francisco and......