I leave for my South African trip a week from tomorrow and I still feel completely disorganized in terms of being prepared – leaving stuff running here, paying bills ahead of time, packing etc. I have family from Annapolis arriving later tonight for a couple of days. They are doing the quintessential college evaluation road trip, having visited Clemson earlier and planning to check out the College of Charleston over the next couple of days. This evening I took this technically unacceptable shot of our new crop of ducklings out on the pond. From 16 we are already down to only 9, but hopefully most of the rest will survive.