Holy f*ck! What an afternoon!

Left work at 4 and went to kill time at the Ferrari dealership at which I kinda work. I wasn't picking my kid up till 7, so I figured I'd go take some pix of the fancy cars with my fancy new camera (did I tell you I actually got it?).

All the cars were crammed inside the shop area cuz of the coming storm (remnants of Ivan), so I took a bunch of pix but was pretty unhappy with all of them.

About time to leave, and one of the Ferrari employees and I plan to run over to the Burger King for a soda. Standing in the lobby of Ferrari, somebody says "Hey, there was a tornado sighted at Dulles Airport" (maybe 4 miles away). I look out the 30' tall wall of windows and say "yeah, uhh...it's right there!".

Bearing down on us, maybe a mile away is the first and only funnel cloud I've seen in real life. It was pretty f*cking amazing.

Needless to say, I started snapping pictures (a feat that would have been near impossible with my old camera). Snap snap snap, watch it get closer, snap snap snap, still closer, snap snap snap, catch a frame with weird blue and red flashes from the transformer that just exploded, snap snap snap, "hey...is there a door on this side of the building?". Watched the tornado approach to about 1/2 a mile away (now standing out in the rain with my 24 hour old camera). The tornado starts to wander off to the right and keeps about a 1/2 mile away, but clearly visible the whole time. As it starts rounding the corner of the building, two of us with cameras run down the length of the building, stopping to snap occasionally. We didn't know at the time, but another guy ran up to the roof and was snapping shots of the funnel from there.

From there, the funnel wanders off to a mile or two away (flying debris clearly visible) and dissapates (as far as we can tell). So afterwards we all stand around the shop, with our adreniline highs, showing each other our pix. Hopefully we got some keepers. Prolly won't really know till we all check them on our computers.

So, after that, I pick up my kid, go grocery shopping and get home (hours later) to find the 20d that I ordered from Ritz Camera had been delivered to my door. Apparently left on the doorstep for my roommate to bring in. Thanks Ritz. Nothing like leaving f*cking $1500 worth of stuff sitting on my porch...*in a hurricane*!!! The best part is that it was supposed to be delivered to my office. I think I'm swearing off Ritz. They really are pretty crappy. Unfortunately, I have to deal with them at least once more to return this camera (since I ended up buying one yesterday from a really cool little shop...becuase Ritz was still telling me I wouldn't get my camera from them until the end of the month). F*'em.

Anyway, crazy insane afternoon. Hope to have some pix to post somewhere soon. Gotta install software and tinker with computers before that will happen tho. Wish me luck.