Napa Valley, here I come...

I just officially registered for the Napa Valley Marathon in March!

I'm so excited - it's been so long since I did a marathon!  I have just under 4 months to get ready, and I'm feeling really good about it.  I did a really nice and easy 10 miles or so yesterday (with my new running buddy! I finally got someone to run with me) and I feel great today.  Can't wait!

Some Sundays are pretty perfect.

I have no complaints about today.  I have few complaints in general, really, but today is pretty fantastic so far.  I had something like 20 people over last night for homemade deep dish pizza, and it was so fun.  I hope everyone else had a good time, because I had a really good time.  I love cooking for people, and I have the greatest friends in the world, and the pizza was pretty delicious, if I do say so myself.  The funniest part was probably that almost everyone who came brought a six-pack of beer, so the entire bottom half of our fridge was full of beer, but we worked our way through most of it over the course of about 6 hours.  And 5 pizzas!  5 of 'em!  Grad students are a hungry, beer-guzzling people, it turns out.  I was also really pleased that the dogs were overall quite well behaved.  A lot of the people here were dog people, so they seemed comfortable with them and were good about petting and patting them when they deserved it and telling them to get their noses away from the food when they deserved that, and the dogs were so happy to have so many people here.  I think a good time was had by all.

So despite all the revelry, I was really good about drinking lots of water, and I woke up feeling weirdly good this morning.  I did about 6.5 miles up in the hills yesterday, and we're playing frisbee this afternoon, so I didn't want to overdo it, but I felt better than I expected to, and I did a good, quick little 5.5 miles with the dogs this morning.  It is a gorgeous day out.  The sun is shining and there's a nice, cool breeze, and it's somehow beautifully warm and cool at the same time.

Now I'm home and I made myself some coffee and pancakes and I put on some new music I treated myself to - the weekend before last, after frisbee, one of my friends invited me to an impromptu concert thing in San Francisco.  And despite the fact that it was Sunday night I had plenty of things to do, I went anyway, and I was so glad I did.  So anyway, I bought the EP by the girl we saw, and it's really nice Sunday morning pancake music.  I don't think she was intending that, but it works.

I'm starting to get really pumped for Napa Valley.  This is almost certainly premature, because it's in a little over 5 months, but I'm starting to get really excited about marathon training again.  I didn't know if that would ever happen again, because after each marathon, I've been ready for a mental break from running for a while.  I love it, but those 4 hour runs really cut into your life.  The thing about a 4 hour run is that it's a whole mental journey.  The physical exhaustion only really kicks in for the last 2-3 miles or so.  It's making yourself head out the door when you know you're going to be gone for 4 hours, and making yourself keep going when you get kind of bored and tired of running, that's the hard part.  And after you've broken through the mental barrier of knowing perfectly well that you are capable of running 26.2 miles, you don't even really get the mental charge that comes from the accomplishment itself anymore.  It almost becomes a bit of a chore: "Aw man, I'm supposed to do another 20 miler this weekend," like "Aw man, I really need to tackle that pile of laundry."

Anyway, now that it's been over a year since my last marathon, I'm totally ready and anxious to do another one.  It's been a long time since I ran 20 miles, long enough that I miss it.  There's something so meditative about settling into a pace and just holding it for several hours.  Your mind drifts all over the place, and then you get to the end and it almost feels like waking up from some weird dream.  Running that far is definitely a completely different experience, physically and mentally, from normal everyday runs.  And I have to be in a certain mental space to actively want to do that, and I am suddenly feeling like I'm in that mental space again.

I think it must have to do with how busy I am this semester.  It's my whole momentum phenomenon; now that I'm back to doing a lot of school work all the time, I'm just feeling generally more hard-core and like running 20 miles is probably a good idea.

Also, I really want to go run through Napa.  It's going to be so gorgeous, and the idea of running through the countryside early in the morning is just so appealing to me right now.

Running, running, running.  I didn't think this post was going to be about that.  I thought it was going to be about how I'm leaving for San Diego and Boston a week from today and I'm not ready for either of those conferences quite yet, but in a way this post is about the fact that I'm in a very good place, mentally, right now.  I have a lot to do, but I feel really good about it, for the most part, even though I could easily be freaking out if I let myself.  It's a good feeling to be at a place in my life where I can think about all the stuff I have to get done and just be ready to buckle down and do it without worrying about whether/how it will get done.  It will get done.  And I will do it.  But I'm not going to worry about it in the meantime.

And so some Sundays are pretty perfect.  You wake up without an alarm clock, take your dogs for a run through the Berkeley hills, fix yourself some coffee and pancakes, listen to some lovely piano music, and then you plan the rest of your week before you head out for some frisbee with your friends. I can't really think of a much better day than that.

It is time.

It is time for another marathon.  It's been nearly a year now, and I'm getting antsy.  I'm also starting to think about the fact that I'm not going to be here that much longer, and there's at least one more race I told myself I'd do before I leave California:

Napa Valley.

I am going to run the Napa Valley Marathon in the spring.  Do you see that landscape?  I think this may be the perfect marathon for me, actually.  It's pretty rural, and I do so miss running through the countryside in the early morning peace and quiet with no one around.  It's got some rolling hills - enough to keep your legs working and help minimize cramping, but not enough to really slow you down. And at 3500 participants, it's not too big, not too small, but just right.  Enough people that you're never completely alone, but few enough that you're never trapped or figuring out how to maneuver and pass people in fanny packs.

So it's on.  I'm really gonna do it, and that gives me five months to get back in marathon shape, which is way more than enough.  (Actually about four months, since I'll have to reserve the last part of February for tapering, but that's still plenty, so I don't even have to start in seriously right away.)  I'll probably start adding in some 10-12 milers on the weekends in October and November, and then I can really start ramping it up starting in December.  The only thing that will be a drag is doing enough training if we have a wet rainy season this year, but I can handle it.

Napa Valley, here I come!

Ow. I rock. Ow.

You guys! I ran a marathon today! And it was awesome!!

I must say, I finished today's Nike Women's Marathon feeling the best I ever have after a race that distance. I mean, it hurt at the end, but really not that bad. I think that means I could've pushed it harder, but you know what? I am very, very satisfied with my performance and my pacing. Play-by-play in a minute, but first, there's this:

When I went to pick up my race packet in Union Square on Saturday, I saw a ton of women gathered outside of Niketown. They were all pointing and taking pictures. So naturally, I'm like, what is going on? There's this big wall, all along the side of the building with these pink lines all over it. On closer inspection, look what I found!

Me! I've been on the exterior wall of Niketown in Union Square for who-knows-how-long. That's pretty cool! That also had some pretty nifty posters for sale with everyone's name on them in teeny tiny print, which is really impressive given that this race draws around 20,000 people, but I decided against buying one. Partially because I wouldn't know what to do with it, and partially because this whole race was one, big, commercialized, Woman Power Extravaganza. Still not entirely sure how I feel about that, but I'm leaning towards "annoyed".

So, let's see what I can say about the race that might not be boring. It was a really great race! The course was really nice, and different enough from the San Francisco Marathon that I'm glad I did it. The main thing is that the first half of the course is disproportionately harder than the second half. I think that's better than the other way around, since you have more energy at the beginning, obviously, but it made it hard to figure out how to pace myself. The weird thing was, I was feeling a little worried throughout the first part of the race, because it was hard. And when you're running a marathon, you're constantly doing this weird "body check" thing. It's like you're running, and you're going, "Ok, how are my feet? Feeling okay. Am I chafing? Little bit. How's my hydration level? Probably ought to get some Gatorade at the next pit stop. Am I out of breath? Can I keep this pace up for the next 19 miles? Should I push it harder, maybe? Ooh, calf twinge, definitely need to hydrate. Do I need to pee bad enough to stop?" etc. etc. ad infinitum. And things were just not particularly coming together for the first half of this race, which is odd. Usually the first half is when you're feeling really good, because you've got all the adrenaline going, but I did have a little calf twinge around mile 9, and I've struggled a bit with calf cramps in my last two marathons, so it seemed like that was a very bad sign so early on and I should run cautiously and hydrate early.

You know what, though? I started feeling weirdly good right around 10 miles. It has never before taken me that long to get warmed up and get into the groove of things, but something just clicked right around 10 miles. Once we got through the hills in Golden Gate Park, we had several long, slight downhills, and I just kicked it in and never looked back. I was nervous about doing that so early on at first, but I was feeling so good that it seemed like a waste not to. But my pacing was so screwy - I finished the first half in a little over 2:00. And since my goal is always to come in under 4:00, this was not a particularly good sign. Plus, it's rough to run negative splits in a full marathon, I think. So I briefly prepared myself for the mental disappointment of coming in over 4:00, and I knew it might be a reality I would have to face. I thought if I could come in under 4:05, I could still be fairly happy with that time, since it was a fairly demanding course.

But I just kept getting faster and faster. It was so weird. In past races, I've started to have leg cramping issues around 21-22 miles, but not at all this time. Granted, the weather was very cool, and I was pretty careful with my hydration (not too much, not too little), but I just powered it all the way in. I was even able to put in what felt like a pretty darn good kick at the end, which has never happened to me in a marathon before. Usually I'm just trying to hang on to my pace as best I can, but I picked it up a fair amount for the last 1.5 miles, and I easily came in under 4:00. Something around 3:56 or 3:57, I think, but the official results haven't been posted yet. I couldn't believe how good that second half went! And I really couldn't believe how good I felt at the end. I mean, it hurt, it always hurts, that's why we do it, but none of that debilitating, ready to collapse-and-or-puke stuff that usually happens. I grabbed a big bagel and wolfed that sucker down (usually I get really nauseous at the end of a long race and can't eat anything substantial for quite a while), and I guzzled the most amazing, delicious bottle of chocolate milk I've ever had (and likely ever will have) in my life.

And oh! The firefighters! At the end of the race, there are firefighters in tuxedos that give you your Tiffany necklace (instead of a medal). It was pretty funny, and they were pretty cute. I found this picture online.

There were also foot massages and other goodies at the end, but I just wanted to get the heck out of there. More on that in a minute.

Despite my satisfying performance and my overall very respectable time, there were unfortunately a few things that kind of sucked about this race, and that keep me from recommending it wholeheartedly. For one - and this is not the fault of the race, obviously - it was raining. At first, it was just a few drops, right around the time I hit Golden Gate Park, near the middle of the race. Then it became a drizzle, and that actually felt kind of nice. Then it steadily picked up until the end of the race, when it really was legitimately raining. This wouldn't have been so bad if it weren't about 58 degrees out, which is a little chilly for rain. It was definitely tolerable while I was still running, but as soon as I stopped, I was pretty miserable. Now, where I take issue with the race itself is because it finishes on the very west side of the city, along the Pacific Ocean, which is cool and all, but there's not much public transportation out there. So they provided shuttle buses back to the east side of the city, except the buses were not there when I finished. Instead, there was a huuuuuuge line of people waiting for buses, most of whom said they had been waiting over an hour. There was no possible way I was going to stand in the cold rain for over an hour having just run a marathon. (Flashback to Big Sur last year.) Thankfully, I brought a change of warm clothes, so after I managed to locate my bag, I was able to put on a dry long sleeved shirt and a thermal fleece, along with some flannel pants, and that felt much better. I also put on one dry sock, but it was actually pretty hard to bend over and get my shoe off at that point, and as soon as I managed to get my shoe back on, my nice dry sock was completely soaked from my sopping wet shoe. I should've seen that coming, but I wasn't really thinking clearly and was so tantalized by the idea of dry socks. So I didn't even bother with the second one. Instead, I wore soaking wet shoes and socks until I finally managed to get home about 2 hours later.

The other thing that was weird about this race was that it's really mostly geared toward middle aged women running a half marathon. Apparently it's "the 10th biggest half marathon in the world". And it's all about "girl power" and "strong women" and "you are beautiful and powerful"... which... okay, I'm all for empowering women. And I'm all for people getting out and getting some exercise. But really? It was kind of annoying. Like, can you please stop walking five abreast with your fanny packs and CamelBaks and stopping in the middle of the road to take pictures, because actually, y'know, there's a race going on, and I'm trying to run it. At one point we went under an overpass, and this woman behind me starts yelling, "yeah girls, let's make some NOOOOIIIISE" and I'm like, "really? really?? what is this, 6th grade? can I please just run through a tunnel without my eardrums being shattered by inexplicably boisterous fanny pack-wearing, pink-clad women?"

So... yeah. It was kind of weird when we split off from the half marathoners, because it suddenly got really quiet, and way less crowded. It was nice and peaceful at first, but then once we hit the Great Highway, which runs along the ocean, it was just this seemingly endless stretch of gray, and it might have been nice to have a little more... energy. Thankfully there was entertainment every mile or so, so that helped break it up. My favorite was either the breakdancers or the really gay dudes in rose-pink body suits jumping up and down yelling "San Francisco loves you!"

So now I'm home and I'd love to share pictures with you, but they're not up yet, and neither is my official race time. And also I'm hungry again and Roger's home, so I think I'm going to make some popcorn and watch Mad Men.

But today was really great, and I'm already thinking about my next race. Maybe I'll do the Marin Marathon in March... it winds through wine country in the spring, and it looks really gorgeous and peaceful and pastoral, and probably more my style in a lot of ways.

I leave you with this shot of me I nabbed from the Oakland Half Marathon I ran back in March. I think it's the only halfway decent shot of me running I've ever had taken. Race photography is such a weird phenomenon, and I try to not really support it by never giving them my money. So this is the thumbnail version I stole from their website.

Oh, funny, I just this very second got an email from Nike saying I finished in 3:57:12, which is a 9:03 pace. I also apparently came in 377th (not bad!) and my split times got significantly faster (29:03 for the first 5K vs. 25:58 for the last 5K). I was dodging tons of people for a good 5 miles at the beginning of the race, so there's that to consider too, but it's hard to argue with a sub-26 5K at the end of a marathon!

Now. If I can just stand up.

Before and After: Melinda Version

Here's a picture of me right after I got my hair cut a few weeks ago:

And I here I am after I got bored yesterday:

I'm a redhead on the inside anyway, I think.

I should get back to work, but I'm (still, again, always) working on putting together stimuli for my QP perception experiment, and you can only stare at lists of made up words for so long. Bowp, chuss, pake, beel, mide... starts to drive you crazy pretty quickly.

So the only other thing I will add is that I got a group of friends together to play Ultimate Frisbee on Friday afternoon, and it was so fantastic. I think everyone had a great time, and I certainly did, and I can't wait to do it again. It was so freeing - running around in the grass with friends on a sunny afternoon. There are few better things in life, in my opinion! And at the end it was starting to get a little muddy, so a bunch of us took off our shoes and I could feel the cool, soft grass underneath my feet and the mud squishing between my toes. So good.

The only embarrassing part is that I am still sore! From frisbee! All of that changing directions and jumping up and down and chucking a disk around... much higher impact than I'm used to, and different muscles, I guess. Then I ran 20 miles yesterday (last time before my race!) and that actually made some of the soreness go away, except I'm just slightly tired and hungry and out of whack today.

So now I will go back to drinking my tea and staring at made up words.

Petite Crise

Well dios mío, I managed to bring some heat back to California with me from Illinois! It is legitimately hot today, for the second day in a row! (Crazy!) I love it. Granted, I feel a little gross and a lot sweaty, but at least now I feel like we had a teensy bit of a summer, whether we end up getting some more heat in September and October or not (that's normally our summer here).

Anyway, Illinois. I tell you what, living in California for two years has turned me into quite the Midwesterner. It's like having the contrast makes me realize what it means to be from the Midwest. Not to wax poetic or anything, but summer in the Midwest means wide open spaces and grass and humming cicadas and humidity and corn fields and sweat dripping down your back and melty ice cream and lovely, dear friends and family that you have missed so much more than you realized. I'm not going to lie; it was really hard being home. Much harder this year than I expected. It just wasn't long enough... only long enough to remember how very much I love everyone and wish that I had a few more days to spend with them. This is probably because I only spent about three days in C-U and then two days in Chicago, which ended up being somewhat unsatisfying and temporarily minor crisis-inducing.

Here is a story that sort of sums it up. In Chicago, I went out to dinner with George and Matt, my two best friends from studying abroad in France. We've all been very good about keeping in touch the past few years, despite the fact that I usually only see them about once a year now. We went to this fantastic Moroccan restaurant. George and I used to cook pseudo-Moroccan food on Friday nights at the American dorm in Paris, so it was a really nice idea, and the food was fantastic. It was so normal just sitting and having dinner with them, and yet I felt this sort 0f simmering panic underneath it all. Just knowing that it was going to be over way too soon, and I didn't know when I'd see them again, and why did I drag my husband and dogs out to California again and do I even really like linguistics that much, etc., etc. Matt was leaving for grad school on the east coast the next day and somewhat freaking out about that, and we all just sort of looked at each other and said, "What are we doing??"

And what are we doing? Getting out and seeing more of the world, meeting new people and making wonderful new friends to love and keep with us forever, for sure, but also leaving wonderful old friends behind! The world is a smaller place with phones and email and Facebook and whatever, but there's something about physically being in a place with people you love that makes emotions more acute. It's not that I needed to talk more with anyone back home, per se, because I talk to them all the time in various forms. But I sure would have liked more time just being physically in the same place as all of those wonderful folks I love so much. That might have made me a little less emotional about the whole trip, instead of just cramming all of those emotions into a few days and then coming back to California and sitting around stewing about it!

In any case, I knew it would be much better once my friends got back and once school related stuff started picking up again, and it certainly is. It is so nice to see everyone, and I love all of these people too, and they make it feel like home too. They're my little linguistics family and we can sit around and be huge nerds together and have a great time doing it. Yesterday was our annual departmental meeting, where the whole linguistics department gets together and everyone introduces themselves and then we eat cookies and mill about for a while. I also took it upon myself to invite all the grad students out for pizza last night. No one has really been organizing anything for the new students for the past few years, and I wanted to make sure they felt welcome and also give us an excuse to go out together, so I emailed everyone and decreed that we should meet at my favorite pizza place at 7:00 last night. And there was a really good turnout! It was really fun, although I didn't get to talk to all of the new first years because they came in later and sat at the opposite end of the table from me, but it's okay, there will be plenty of time for that.

Afterwards Jess and I thought it would be fun to go bowling, but everyone was tired and only six of us ended up going. But it was fun! I hadn't been bowling since I was like 17, I think. I had a pretty dismal first game and came in dead last, but I somehow managed to win the second game, so it evened out, I guess. Not that the point of bowling is to bowl, really. It was just nice to be with friends, and the "rolling a heavy thing down an oiled lane towards a bunch of pins" thing is pretty secondary.

I think the only other thing I want to add right now is that I ran 18 miles on Sunday and it wasn't even bad at all. I'm not sure which part of that is crazier. My next marathon is October 17th, and I realized that that means I'll be running 26.2 miles on my 26-and-2-days birthday, which is ridiculous but seems to make sense, in a stupid way. Anyway, I guess it looks like I'll be ready by then, I'll just have to get in a few 20 milers in September.

Can you believe I'm going to be 26? I can't. But I say that every year now.

Well, I think it's time to go by the store and buy some ice cream, because I am hot. I hope you all know how very much I love you; the older I get, the more I realize that it's the people in your life that make it worth living, and I am thankful for each and every one of you, whether we talk often or not at all. I have a pretty great life, and no right to complain about any aspect of it, except maybe that whole thing about how meeting new great people entails changing locations and missing old great people. But that is a fairly minor crisis in the scheme of things, n'est-ce pas?

Moving and running and visits, oh my!

This update will probably be all over the place. I'm sitting in the office on campus, where I'm technically "on duty" but have nothing too important to do. The LSA Institute is still going on (2.5 more weeks!), and I'm on technology duty, which means I go around to all the classrooms at the beginning of the class period and make sure everyone's computer/projector is working, and then I sit in the main office for the rest of the shift in case of any major breakdowns. In which case I wouldn't have the foggiest idea how to fix things, so I'll just keep my fingers crossed that it doesn't come up!

Anyway, the last two weeks have been crazy. Crazy. We're moved in, and most of our stuff is put away, at least to a respectable extent. I'm still way behind on laundry, and I don't know when that's going to be rectified, but I'll get there in the next week or so, I guess. The first few days we were there (a week ago now), I was really good about doing a little bit of arranging/putting away every day. But then Roger's dad got here on Thursday night, and we hung out with him for a few days, and I ran my marathon on Sunday, and now it's back to the ol' grind and it's already Tuesday!

I may type up a proper race report in the future, but for now, suffice it to say that the race was great and really really fun and I'm very glad I did it. I was a little worried going in, because my training went something like this:

February: start running with Sarah and building up long runs from 12 miles to 17 or so.
March and April: keep building and get up to 20 miles. Run Big Sur at the end of April.
May: recover from Big Sur for two weeks, then do one long run.
June: two or three more long runs.
July: plan far more long runs than I actually do. I don't know if I actually did any really long ones in July. Get worried that I'm not ready... then... marathon!

It really snuck up on me. Between the 4th and moving and the Institute, suddenly it was time for the race and I realized I hadn't done a long run in about a month. It actually turned out great, though, because it was enough time to get well rested and fully recovered but not lose too much fitness.

And the race itself was great. I came in at 4:00:08, which is just over a 9 min/mile pace. I was secretly hoping to come in under 4 hours again, but not being very optimistic about it, since SF is a considerably harder course than Columbus (my last full marathon). But to my surprise, I definitely had the fitness to do it - I would've easily made it if I hadn't gotten trapped behind hundreds of people on the Golden Gate Bridge. Since I waited until the very last minute to sign up, I was given a late start time (about an hour after I should've according to my pace), which means I started with all the people hoping to finish under 4:45 instead of under 4:00. So I was already dodging and passing a lot of people for the first few miles, and then we hit the bridge, and there was only so much I could do. The lanes were very, very narrow, and I did my best to pass people without being a jerk and pushing them out of the way. On the one hand, it was good in that it made me reign it in so I wasn't completely dead at the end. On the other hand, I was only 8 seconds over 4 hours, and it would've been nice to have that 3 at the beginning of my time!

Anyway, after the bridge, I was able to pick it up quite a bit, and I actually ran negative splits for the whole race. (Non-runner translation: I consistently got faster from the beginning to the end.) The best part was that my legs didn't cramp nearly as bad as in Columbus; I learned my lesson from the first time and was careful to hydrate throughout the race. My right calf started bothering me around mile 23, but didn't get really painful until mile 24, and never really seized up as badly as in Columbus. I was tired the rest of the day on Sunday and went to bed early, and my quads were pretty sore yesterday, but I'm only a little sore today.

The main thing is that I need to try to get more sleep this week to let my body repair itself, and it's hard to make that happen when I have so much stuff going on. The dogs still need to be walked, food still needs to be bought and prepared, I still have to be on campus by 8:00 on Tuesdays and Thursdays, etc. I'm enjoying my classes, but I must admit, it will be very nice when they're over. And then I'll have a week and half before my "real" classes start.

Okay, I think I'm done for now. I'm going to finish my lunch and try to get some work done. More updates later!

Oh, P.S. to my grandma, Michelle, and anyone else who was wondering: the stairs in our big room go up to a second story. On the second story is another bedroom and a bathroom; however, our landlady uses this space for storage, so we just keep the door at the top of the stairs closed.

July is for new adventures.

A quick, picture-heavy update before I go to dinner. We're going for Ethiopian food tonight. Should be fun!

So one adventure I will be embarking upon in July is the San Francisco Marathon!! That's right, I finally took a deep breath and signed up today! I put in a good 20-miler this morning (12 miles with my new running partner and 8 miles with the dogs; it's good to break it up a little like that), and it went off without a hitch and I feel weirdly good right now. Not ravenously hungry, not particularly tired, and only a little stiff. So I think I'm ready! This will be me in one month:



Aaaahh! Races are so exciting! And a 5:30 start time in downtown San Francisco, plus running across the Golden Gate Bridge at dawn will undoubtedly be awesome.


Adventure #2 (which will actually transpire before Adventure #1) is, of course, that we're moving. I walked by the new house and snapped a few quick shots the other day. As I said before, it's nothing particularly lovely to look at from the outside, so part of me wants to not even post these shots, but I realize that curious minds want to know. :)

That last one is from a little down the street so you can see the neighborhood a little bit. We're both so excited to get moved in! Can't wait to be there, get settled, and show y'all what the inside looks like.

The only other thing I would add is that I've been working on a very cool art project that I'm extremely pleased with and proud of. Remember I told you about the Galapagos Islands in black ink on our new kitchen floor? Well, I've been contemplating decorating our little dining room table for some time now, and I was thinking of putting flowers all over it to go with the flora/fauna theme of the floor. But then I thought, y'know, as much as I love biology, I'm a linguist, and I should do something that reflects what I do while still complementing the aesthetics of the floor. So this is what I came up with:


Basically, I covered the table and chairs with the words "one language is never enough" in several dozen different languages. It was particularly fun because I haven't done an art project in a long time, and because I was able to come up with something original that actually turned out how I envisioned it! I'm particularly pleased with the the non-Roman scripts, e.g. the Chinese and Japanese you see in the last picture below. They were challenging because I free-handed it all; I printed off little strips of paper with the words I wanted, carefully copied them onto the table in pencil, then went over them and jazzed them up a bit with black permanent marker.




I actually have 2 or 3 more to finish, but the vast majority of it is finished.

Okay, I think I'm done for now. Love to all!