no dice from the upgrade script

Then I did realize I hadn't checked the possibility of a product in the master category. We had been importing products and lo and behold there was a dangling product in the products to category table but no product by that id in the products table! Didn't show in admin because there was no product but prevented the category from displaying correctly. Imports were set up by client - surprised there's not more wrong....

Problem solved.

Thanks everso much!