It’s a good day when you spend it with friends on their deck.

It’s the story of my life, really – so many things on lists, so little time. I suspect it’s the story of many folks … on my list has been cleaning the window in my office. Instead, we spread 32 bales of pine straw, killed weeds and started cleaning out the pool area.

Richard Griffiths, a now-retired vice president from CNN, finished up his ninth Friday talk at the college. I didn’t make it to enough of these, but the ones I did were great.

My friend Stanley Leary was in town to talk to my class today, we snuck over to The Grill for lunch. The waitress at the register was talking up a film camera she saw in a local vintage shop.

My family wonders why I’m almost always behind at work. It’s because of times like this, 4:39 p.m. on a Wednesday, and I have a dean, an associate dean and an institute’s director in my office.

We did launch a new initiative earlier in the day with journalist Bob Sullivan and colleague Keith Herndon, an Independent Journalists Resource Coalition to pull together material for journalists working on their own, partnering with the National Press Photographers Association and the Small Business Development Center here at the University of Georgia.

What’s worse, this turned out to be one of my own students.

They keep telling us we get the brightest kids at the university, but I know it’s an averaging of intellect …