thanks a lot, Chicago

Everybody here has been crazy for spring to arrive lately. (This has manifested itself a lot at work, actually. People come into a flower store in March and act like crazy people and have creepy intense conversations about how much they need these tulips so they can pretend it's spring NOW.) We can feel it hovering around the edges of winter (a little humidity, more birdcalls than I've heard in months, sunny days that don't mean I'm going to freeze my ass right off) with occasional days that are all spring, warm and wonderful. But today, which is finally technically spring, it's snowing quite hard and feels like 20 outside. I'd downgraded to my jacket (my old "winter coat" from AZ) but today I'm going to have to backtrack and put on my long underwear, too.
Last week I played a gig that was just awful. I'm not going to go into details, but there was a lot of physical and mental discomfort involved and a lot of driving and no time to relax ever for about nine days. In the middle of this, I was coming home from rehearsal, loaded down with groceries I'd picked up at the store near the rehearsal space (I wasn't otherwise going to have time to get any food for about another week and it was getting critical here), zoned out and staring out the window practically drooling and just completely exhausted and depressed. There was this girl on the train, green hair and big boots and leather jacket with the horned smiley face on the back, and as the doors opened to let her off she runs over and gives me a piece of folded paper and dashes out the door.
The woman across from me smirked, and I thought I'd just received some stranger's email and or phone number and it would be a good story. Actually, it was an unsigned note, kind of cheesy and all about how everybody is important and you just really have to take what you have and grab onto it and make the most of it, and really lots of people love me even if it feels like not, etc. So yes, cheesy, but actually it made me feel much better. The content didn't matter, but the humor of the situation and the kind of naive goodwill that could prompt something like that did. I won't say my day got entirely better, but at least for a while I was appreciating the sun and the sensation of going home in a much better frame of mind.