One of the few perks our paper’s editorial staff gets is a free lunch, which was today. These students work hard and they get a few meals and small checks and loads of experience and clips and a big resume builder out of the arrangement. Not a bad deal when you think about it.

So today was the lunch that the marketing and communication office arranges. They meet each other, students-journalists and PR pros, and each talks about what they do. In the case of our university almost all of the people who work in that office are Samford grads. Most of them were in the current students’ position some or several years ago. So there is a commonality.

There is also a lot of “This is what we do” and “This is how we can help you.” That’s mixed with “This is what we won’t do” and “We look at you like every other media outlet we work with.” And they do, by and large. We’re very lucky, as a newsroom, to have the circumstance that we do with the administration and the media relations folks and the department and all the dynamics that interact with students toiling away in their learning laboratory.

Also, at lunch there is variant of derby pie, and you don’t turn that down.

Because so many people joined us today we could not dine in the Rotunda Club, which is where this lunch is typically held and where the silverware is more shiny, the food more tasty and the linens more … lineny … than anywhere else on campus. (They also serve, in the Rotunda Club, the best fried chicken I have ever had. And, being from the South, I know from fried chicken.)

The Rotunda Club is the only place on campus that serves that particular pie, but our colleague who arranged the meal said “the pie must be brought to me,” and so it was. And it was good.

After that someone took promotional pictures. I found my way into a brief meeting. Then I had a long chat with the new editor, a sharp, hardworking and thoughtful type.

There was one other administrative conversation, another errand and then back in the car.

Because now we are in Georgia.

There is a race tomorrow. I am not racing as I have not felt right all week, but The Yankee will be taking part in the aquabike — the swim/ride race — in the morning. We will wake up before sunrise and we will be on the way from the hotel to the event before the sky gets bright. And she is going to have an amazing race.

I know this because she almost always does, and because we had Italian tonight. We visited La Trattoria, which was pretty good for small town Italian food. The hostess was the waitress. She might have also had to go out back and grow the vegetables that eventually made their way into the minestrone and in the lasagna. They offered a spicy marinara, but there are worse things. Like the wait. They thought they were serving in Rome, where the wait is part of the meal.

In Georgia? Well, you’re in Georgia, aren’t you?

Random observation: I’ve never been on a trip to central or northern Georgia in my adult life where they weren’t currently wrecking the roads. We know the work is orchestrated by Georgia Tech grads — engineers and all.

The shoddy condition can only be because they have to employ Georgia grads, right?

Ahh, the liberating season of football season jokes.

Have a great weekend! We’re going to race!