I stand corrected. This is, apparently, not winter anymore, but officially known as "mud season."

"Howya doin'?" I said to the man who was staring as he approached me. I figured he thought I was somebody he knew.

"Sorry, but that looked really cool," he said, by way of explanation. The man was approaching from down the street a ways, when I had stepped outside the Local Beer Joint and lit a cigarette. He looked momentarily awestruck.

"The way you were backlit just then, it looked like an old photograph from Paris or something."

"Yeah. It's beautiful out here tonight." It was, too. I was wearing my jacket, but no hat or mittens or anything, and I was perfectly comfortable. There was a brief exchange about the weather, wherein the man mentioned in a sideways fashion that he was visiting town.

"Where are you visiting from?" I said, internally wincing at my grammar.

"Chicago," he replied, and I immediately felt better, since that's where I learned to end a sentence in a preposition.

"No shit. Me too. Whereabouts do you live?"

He replied with an intersection which is two blocks from one of my old apartments. We chatted a bit. I talked about the tattoo parlour/hair salon that I used to frequent, a former nightclub.

"I saw The Clash at that club."

This prompted the usual 5 minute diatribe from me about how fantastic was The Clash and how I wish I could travel back in time to see them. It turned out that this guy was the uncle of a guy I had just met last week, who is a friend of one of my co-workers.
Once again, the world demonstrates its smallness.