I learned a valuable lesson yesterday.

Before I go into it, I should give a quick update of my life post-Florence.  I came back to the states in great head-space.  I spent about a month at home getting sun burnt, painting, and spending time with my family.  Re-entry proved to be an interesting factor during that time, but I'll save that for another post.  Now I am in DC for the summer.  I have an internship at the Washington Project for the Arts (see link @ left).  I love my job, the people I work with, the location, and of course, the art.

Today after work, everyone at the office (by everyone, I mean the 3 people that work there) including myself, went back to art-o-matic, a huge art event that took place from May 9-June 15.  The show was coming to a close, and we had to pack up some of our things that were over there and bring them back to the office.  Mid-way through packing up the car, we realized that one of us had accidentally locked the keys in the car.  For some, panic ensued because there were places to be and people to see.  For others, this was a period of amusement and ultimately hilarity.

As we stood outside holding up our cell phones to the car doors in an attempt to send remote control car key waves to unlock the vehicle, the weather did a 180.  The weather that was once picture perfect, lemonade-stand-worthy, rapidly turned into a cliched Dorothy-in-Kansas storm.  And then, all of a sudden the immediate area that I was in, turned into this surreal, Michel Gondry "science of sleep" like montage...

The sky changed to an erie greenish-grey, releasing raindrops that fell ever so lightly, they looked like snow flakes falling during a quiet winter night / artists mopily trudged slowly in and out of the rain packing up their cars with their artwork that didn't sell / a vibrantly colored, double-arched rainbow appeared over a gigantic construction site / thick black clouds of smoke from a fire rose up over the elevated train tracks / while 4 people surrounding a silver mini van, each at a different window, peered in to catch a glimpse of the keys that would take them home.

It was after this sudden shift in weather and chain of surreal events that made me realize my mistake:  i left my camera in the car.  the locked car.

Lesson learned:  bring camera everywhere.  always.