Auth and DB conflicts

Hi all, I'm using Auth with a database to protect a site, and can't figure out how to use DB for other things... Looks like Auth includes DB when the auth object is instantiated, but I cannot use DB anywhere else. ? For example, I created a simple page from the Auth tutorial example. It works fine. But how can I include DB-driven data within that protected site? I cannot just reference the $db object, and if I try to create a new one the resultset throws an error: Fatal error: Call to undefined function: Â Â Â Â die() in test.php on line 34 How can you reference DB in an Auth-protected website? -- Mitch