As we left the house for our early walk to the beach this morning, probably around 5:40 a.m., a friend across the street was also out in front of his house.

“Hey,” he said. “I heard you won an award last night.”

I looked around to see who else he might be talking about.

“I don’t think so,” was my reply. “At least, not that I know of.”

It took a minute or so to sort out that he was talking about the awards announced last night by the Society of Professional Journalists, Hawaii Professional Chapter.

But I didn’t know anything of mine had been entered. If that happened, it was news to me.

So when we got back home, I searched out list of the SPJ Hawaii Chapter’s “2012 Excellence in Journalism Awards.”

Quickly scrolling through the list, I found it.

ALL MEDIA
Column Writing or Blog/News

First Place
Hawaii Monitor
Ian Lind
Honolulu Civil Beat

Judge’s comments: “I love a columnist that sees his or her job as an investigatory one. These columns were enlightening and interesting – and I suspect forced some changes. Nice job.”

Now I’ll have to find out how many columns were submitted so that I can reread them.

And the series on voter participation I wrote last year was a finalist in the “public service reporting” category.

A nice surprise on what started out as a cloudy morning but has now turned sunny.

I should say that it appears the Star-Advertiser again did not participate this year. And in the television category, it looks like KHON was the only station to enter stories.

Also noted: The now departed Honolulu Weekly landed “First Place” awards in four categories, and had several other stories among the finalists. A strong showing.