Wonder what was so funny???, originally uploaded by ChrisMowder.

This past weekend was the annual South Carolina Press Association Winter meetings and awards banquet. Traditionally, in my three years in MB this is always one of the biggest parties of the year, and one of the few times when reporters, photographers, designer, editors, etc. all get together to celebrate the good work we've done over the past year.

This year the need for a party seemed especially essential considering all the hard things that have happened and all the people we've lost since this time last year. Overall, the experience was enjoyable as always, but wasn't quite the blowout I would have expected with the banquet being here in Myrtle Beach, in our own backyard.

The dinner seemed smaller than in previous years and a little more boring in that it was hard to hear/follow along as they were giving out all the awards. The Sun News was well represented, with everyone adopting the last-minute "Hard Rock" theme. Still, we were not quite the stars of the evening as we were last year when we won the much-coveted President's Cup trophy, and instead got overshadowed a bit by The Post and Courier of Charleston who seemed to win everything.

I was happy to get my award for Best Infographics Portfolio (which is for the best body of work amongst all the artists/designers in the state), which is something I had always wanted to win since coming here.

But generally the awards are just an excuse to get to the dancing and drinking of the after party. However, this year there was no "official" afterparty and instead they just set us all loose at Broadway at the Beach. While this was still fun, battling noisy packed bars full of rude drunk people didn't quite live up to the wedding-reception vibe of the past few years. Usually the young and old alike are drinking and dancing the electric slide and acting like fools, but instead this was just like any other Saturday night at Broadway.

So instead of the usual crowd of editors and older folks, we ended up spending the night hanging out with some other Sun News folks and the younger crowd from the Charleston paper, which all turned out to be very nice and cool. We spent the evening between Croc Rocks piano bar and Blarney Stones and for the most part had some good clean fun...with the exception of some predicatbly dramatic moments.

Overall the night was a moderate success, but I still think Heidi and I probably had more fun shopping for our "rock star" outfits than anything else. Click the photo below to see all of our pictures from the evening.

Cleaning up after the awards, originally uploaded by ChrisMowder.