[development] Using l() function from external script

In Drupal 6 I have an external script to create some nodes. I would like to use the l() function to create links to other nodes using 'node/n' as the path. However, since my script is running at doc root*, the l function (actually the url() function) is prepending the current directory to the url. So instead of: http://www.example.com/this/that/then-some I'm getting: http://www.example.com/scripts/this/that/then-some Thoughts? Jeff * later this script will move outside of doc root