Shouldn't a banquet have food?

As you'll recall the original reason for my trip back to Macon was for the annual Mercer Computer Science Honors banquet. You can read the invitation in my post here. As you can read in that post, this banquet sort of fell apart without Penny there to direct and manage it. Invitations weren't mailed out, attendance was lower than usual, and then there was the food. Or maybe I should say "and then there wasn't the food." Check out the tables:This is Dr. Bob Allen, one of my former professors, co-workers, and also my masters thesis advisor. You know the old saying. When there's two paparazzi in town, eventually there's gonna be a shoot out.DRAW! Eventually I was forced to bow out as his camera had a better flash, battery, and telephoto lens. You'll also notice Dave's head in both photos. Remind me to come back and tell you Dave's Krystal Kup story (with pictures!). Normally the schedule for the banquet starts with the food, then the guest speaker, then presentations of the awards and coveted coffee mugs to the graduating seniors. Somewhere in there they also recognize the alumni. This year since it was determined that I'd graduated earlier than anyone else, I was the designated fossil. After the food and the awards, the final event of the evening is usually the induction of the new members of Upsilon Pi Epsilon Computer Science honor fraternity. Normally, with the inductions being the last event on the schedule, everyone has a chance to run and hide from Dr. Allen so they don't have to be in the initiation ceremony. Unfortunately, with the food snafu, the schedule was rearranged, and no one had a chance to run and hide. And you can forget claiming not to be a member of UPE, as Dr. Allen prints up a list of members and brings it with him. As punishment for losing the camera shoot out, there was no way I was going to avoid being in the ceremony. Especially since, at one point, I think I was even president ("Upsilon") of the Mercer Chapter. (They say it UP-silon, not OOP-silon, which all Greeks know is the proper pronunciation.) With all the celebration and ceremony out of the way it was finally time to get some of the food that had miraculously arrived while we were inducting new members. Choosing your seat at a banquet like this is always tough. If you are a software guy (like me) and you find yourself alone at a table of hardware guys, then you'll be tortured and ridiculed all night. And of course the reverse is true. Us software guys show hardware folks no mercy. Don't even get me started on the pompous networking guys, that everyone hates. If you've looked through the pictures of Penny at Mercer's CS page you may have noticed me just off to the side in a few pictures. Rather than wading into the whole hardware/software/networking war, I usually sat with one or two seats of Penny and Carol Ann. Molly one of Penny's favorite student workers would also usually sit at the same table within a couple of seats of Penny. This year, without Penny and Carol Ann, it just seemed natural that Molly and I wind up sitting together. It sort of helped ease that feeling that something or someone was missing. Sitting there, eating dinner, you couldn't help but think about Penny, who at the time had only been out of surgery for a few hours. I couldn't help but find myself asking WWPD? (What Would Penny Do?) Well if you read my post on Penny's nicknames for me you know exactly what Penny would do. She'd put me in awkward, uncomfortable situations and then take pictures of it. I know that because she did it last year, too. Me and Molly at the 2007 banquet/cookoutSince I had basically run off the only other photographer, I knew it was up to me. I fought off twitterpation(?) by reminding myself that Penny would be cheering me on (and goading me by calling me Thumper).you would not believe how hard this picture was to get. Without Penny to take the picture we perched the camera on the hood of Molly's truck. The slope of the hood made us look like we were on the deck of the Titanic as we both appeared to lean to the left. I did my best to edit the photo and make it look better. But no matter how much I cropped or rotated the picture it never really got much better. But eventually I figured out the problem: I was in the picture. (Isn't that always the problem?) Much better!Y'all congratulate Molly, the latest and greatest Mercer graduate, and thankfully NOT in Computer Science. And thank you Molly for all the fun and laughter over the past few years! you will be missed!