#346

#346, Tucson, AZ

Now that I've spent all that time dissing Tucson, Arizona -- though, in fairness, it's less of a dis to the place itself and more a detailed report of my own existential dread brought about by desert climates -- I feel I have to take it all back, for look at all the nice hand-made things you can get there. Hand-painted numbers do have a quality the others will never have, in the way that a handmade gift is always nicer than a store bought one. Don't you think?

With less than three weeks left to this project, I'm starting to get that weird spring fever feeling that hits one just before graduation from school, only it's twenty-seven degrees outside and there's no diploma for obsessive number collecting.

There will indeed be a full stop once we hit 365, a realization that's making me extra sentimental for something as relatively ordinary as, say, a hand-painted number on a building. What follows in the new year is still being worked out, but I've got some ideas brewing and it's still going to hit all the usual notes -- obsessive collecting, urban scavenger hunts, riffs on everything from Hemingway to Helvetica -- and I couldn't be more excited about it. In the meantime, I hope you'll enjoy as we race toward the finish line.