2005-06-17 - 12:02 p.m.

i've been moving a lot of stuff from my painting studio to my loft where i live. it's too hot for the dog days of summer to be in there for more than an hour, and it's much to cold to paint there in the dead of winter. so that's almost four months of the year where the studio is basically just storage. and although my studio gets lovely light during the day, i also share it with a woodworker. for a long time this was not a problem, but lately everything in my studio is coated with wood dust. i thought i could handle it but it's starting to drive me a little nuts.

i moved around all the furniture in my loft, threw a bunch of stuff out, sold other things, and now i feel like i have more room than ever before. i set up an easel in the back of my loft and i'm excited to get to work. this will eliminate my fairly pleasureable stroll back and forth to the studio, but i think i will feel better about showing work to collectors and gallerists in my loft.

to take a break from all this relocation, i played capture the flag on the northside of williamsburg last night. it was the most fun i've ever had running at top speed. almost 50 people showed up to play on a summer night with intermittent rain, and we divided into two teams with pink and yellow armbands. i volunteered to play defense and patrolled my zone of wythe ave between north 6th and north 7th. i got to tag out several yellow team members, including a couple who were on bikes. yellow captured our flag, however, when they sent a raiding party of five straight down wythe and two of them managed to get past me. i nearly caught the player returning with the flag, but he got past me and another defender. i was impressed with the range of people who showed up, enthusiastic about playing. a couple of nine year olds on bikes proved to be our most successful defenders.

after an hour and a half of running at top speed i needed refreshment, and my friend met me over chilled glasses of australian chardonnay in the back garden at iona. we're working on a proposal right now and i wanted to hash over our underlying philosophy before submitting the final draft. we ran into a couple of guys playing chess, and after kicking the winner's ass all over the chessboard, i recruited them for my monday night chess club. i don't really mind losing, in fact i think i'm a pretty gracious loser. but i love to win.