You know, they say that smell...

...is the sense that most strongly triggers memory, and I totally fucking believe it. The weather has finally turned beautiful (at least temporarily) in the Ozarks -- warm enough for short sleeves, even. I used to really love winter, but these days down here in Weird Weather Land winter is hell. I'm sick of ice storms, sick of wind and cold with no snow, sick of the snow we DO get always falling over a two-inch layer of ice that came before it...

Anyway, I've been itching for spring to get here if for no other reason than winter weather really kills my business. If it's warm and sunny outside, suddenly people get increased motivation to actually walk around after a movie or before dinner and see what's new.

I spent yesterday and today at my store since I had last night off at the convenience store. Just me, hangin' out takin' pics of merch to add to the website and otherwise wasting time with my nin.com peeps. I noticed late in the day that even though it was something like 80 degrees out, the inside of my store was almost frigid. I had all climate control turned off, but the building my store is in is built like a fucking cave. The back part is below grade, and it's surrounded on all sides by other buildings, so once it hits a temperature range it likes to stay there. 80 degree day, and I was inside wearing a sweatshirt.

So today when I opened I decided it was prime weather to prop the front door open, actually hoping to let some of the heat in. I still spent the day in a sweatshirt. I tried toughing it out in just a t-shirt (and jeans, I assure you, despite it being No Pants Tuesday), but I just couldn't take it.

It wasn't until about 5:30pm, as I was surfing through blogs looking for interesting ones to subscribe to...

(On a side note, I realize that most of the world speaks languages other than English, but seriously... Must it be that hard to find interesting blogs that I can actually read? I think 75% of the blogs I landed on using the "next blog" link in the navbar were in other languages. And 90% of the English ones were just plain boring.)

...that I experienced this weird flashback-esque reaction to the smell of the neighborhood wafting through my door. It was that "urban springtime" smell, and they should totally make car air fresheners that smell like that. It's like the world around me just morphed into something completely different. It felt like warm days used to feel when I lived in Chicago and existed in a world where windows were left open most of the year. And I suddenly felt strangely more connected to the world or something, a sudden urge to go find interesting people and do interestig things and get the hell out of my cooped up, lethargic existence for a while.

Okay, enough of me waxing vaguely poetic. I hear you rolling your eyes.

It was a super nice change after the afternoon's ticket purchasing frustrations. Like in some karmic exchange for not getting tickets today, I got springtime instead.