It’s funny how some days you plan on writing one thing and then move to another unexpectedly. Perhaps the most intriguing part about it is how you come to the second though process almost as quickly as you remember coming to the first. Today was one of those days for me.

I had originally intended to write my post today on another music-related news piece, but was side-tracked by something a lot more mundane: the weather. While not the most brilliant of subjects to use for smalltalk, I was nonetheless struck by the power with which the weather in Atlanta commanded my attention today.

Atlanta isn’t exactly known for extreme weather; not in the sense that Boston has blizzards of Miami has hurricanes. Today though, the cloudy morning skies turned dark gray around 3:00 PM—right before the downpour of hail started. Needless to say I was caught off guard. Not so much because of the hail (we do have hail in Atlanta from time to time in the spring), but because of the speed with which it suddenly changed to sun after about 20 minutes. The tornado warning I got on my phone was made all the more comical by the light shining through my blinds.

And what side-tracked me the most? It made me miss Amsterdam—and my time there—so much. Anyone who’s ever been to The Netherlands will tell you that Dutch weather is a clusterfuck of indecisive bouts of precipitation and wind. It literally is sunny one minute and hailing ten minutes later—sometimes the hail came down as the sun was bright and out. That’s what today’s hail-and-sunshine mixture made me miss: the time I spent walking along those canals and drinking black coffee. Ironic, isn’t it? The affects that weather can have on us even years after it’s passed. Go figure.