a few days at the beach is good to refresh a guy.
we made some great castles as you can see… the weather was perfect and we could be on the beach for hours without burning. it’s a little sad but i didn’t want to come back, i mean i do love work and i do miss making pies, but i don’t like the million other things i have to do every day. it’s got me kindof down still, as i revise my lists, and avoid half the tasks. i want to get to a place where i have no list going, even if it’s for 2 days… but my lists only get longer. sometimes it feels like a curse.
i am excited about the silos show coming up. i was told by the booking agent and the label not to book an opening act, that jon dee graham was traveling with the band as opener. then a week before the show i happen to find out that jon dee graham is not joining the tour until later. basically now it’s too late to try and book the opening band i would want, and i don’t want to book an opening band 3 days before the show, so no opener. which is fine.
lightnin’ salvage opened march 3rd, 2006. this saturday is our one year anniversary, and the place is finally catching on.
my mind still seems so fried from the many projects i attempt to tackle, that i probably need 2 weeks vacation to truly sort it out and calm it down to normal speed. since that isn’t goign to happen, i am going to try another approach. i’m not sure what that approach is yet, but i will report on it when i figure it out.
i was able to not talk on my cell phone for 3 days which is practically a miracle, and i came home to 53 emails, which is insane.

i had heard about Al’s pizza in jax. i heard it was voted best. it was right down the street from where we were staying and c and i walked there one night while my mom babysat the kids. they had four ovens (compared with our two). they had a long list of other items, pasta, sandwiches, wraps… we got a pizza, half pepperoni mushroom, half pepperoni ground beef. i was suprised to see the beef was the frozen crumbled kind you get when you order from hungrie howie’s or other fast food pizza places. i love that topping, but i couldn’t bring myself to serve it on my pie. plus, the beef we bake in our oven tastes way better. anyway, the al’s pie we ate had a couple tragic flaws.
#1. not enough sauce. dry, flavorless, where is the taste?
#2. too much cheese. this is tied for the most common mistake (tied with undercooking the pie.)
the result? the food sits like a brick in my stomache the rest of the night and i feel awful. the most amazing part is i didn’t even eat the leftovers. i always eat pizza leftovers.
but then, al’s has 4 locations. how can every pie be right when the guy has 4 stores? it can’t. the place looked cool, it was busy for 6pm on a monday night. but the pie was so-so.
this is satchel signing off saying, “if you want good pie, eat at satchel’s.”

well, it’s not really a tree”house” but just a platform to sit on. c started this project a week ago by nailing up some steps… i took over the fun today and made a sittin’ spot. i sat up there once but it may be the last time for me. too scary. i’m scared of heights you see. silas thought it was the best thing ever, and check out the shirt i bought for c… i had a productive day. i cleaned up my garage, ugh… i worked on a space for a dishwasher in our kitchen. i finally caved in to c’s requests, and am getting the dishwasher. i always thought i was the dishwasher. who wants to hear some noisy equipment when you can clear your mind, bust some suds, and do it in half the time? but c’s point that “i don’t do the dishes” is hard to argue. i do dishes, just not enough to make any argument against a dishwasher machine. i used to be a professional dishwasher, but i moved on i guess. big al was the professional dishwasher tonight. that guy can really bust a move. he’s basically still the new guy but he handles a saturday night like he’s been doing this all his life. i’m impressed.

someone stole pager #17 tonight. lately we’ve had lots stolen, or maybe just missing, but most likely stolen, on accident i do suppose. they cost about $60 each to replace. lately 5 are missing = $300 down the drain. it’s not like they have any value outside of our restaurant. so, now i have to either A. paint a sign that asks folks not to steal the pagers (which is lame to have to make a sign by the door basically asking people not to steal.) or B. ask for people’s drives license to get a pager. (which is lame just because now we have to keep up with people’s personal stuff, what a hassle) one thing i know, something has to be done. i can’t lose $60 every weekend to somebody leaving with my pagers. it’s like someone walking out on a $60 tab. it’s a bummer.

i must say the night went smooooothly. yvan on oven, josh on p3 and me bustin out pies like lightnin’… it was the best combo i’ve seen yet. we were all on tonight too, pies were coming out quick and y had the oven organized like money.
ruthies desserts were perfect again.
and tammy was out at a party but leah showed some stuff.
eb, god bless her, was working a double, and had a family crisis going on all day but never missed a beat.
i could sit here and name out all the people who worked and how they were awesome, but i really don’t have the time.
suffice it to say, it was a good weekend. LSE is now starting to pay it’s own way in the world, and that’s another whole story i could go into but won’t.

i’m going to take a few days off blogging and think about things. there’s so much to think about, and to process, and to file away. i may even turn my cell phone off for a few days and chill… i doubt it though.

it was a smooth friday night. about as smooth as it could have been. in the kitchen we had a pretty good time. almost every pie was perfect. i wish i ate dinner though.

everything about everything is harder than i expected. things that look rosey sometimes are sad.
if i write about the normal things, i may leave out the sad parts.
bacon goes good with grits and eggs or waffles and hashbrowns… bacon could be a wallet…
lawn chair webbing could be used on a lawn chair… hands could be cooking… bacon…

bacon, hands, wallets and waffles… all these things are things i love.

i worked some today, not much. i planned to work more but didn’t work as much as i expected.
when you are your own boss, it’s easy to work less. i worked a lot today, i worked all day, just not all of it was directed at satchel’s pizza… let’s break it down.
before we opened, i re-hung the japanese style paper lanterns that hang on the screen porch. i also trimmed back some dead banana leaves and dead garden plants before we opened. later, i rigged the beer cooler so that it could drain the excess beer. the drain broke yesterday and i promised tammy i would try and come up with an solution by today. i think the solution was her idea, to silicone a funnel under the broken drain, with an attached hose to drain into a bucket.
i rolled some dough balls and talked about dough with shon and tim, and they ignored me and acted as if i didn’t know what i was talking about. they seem to know the job better than i do. but then there is the occasional thin spot that we see…
i called in a half dozen times to ask this and that, and check on this thing or another.
i ate 2 pepperoni, ground beef, zucchini, carrot, lite bacon deep dish slices for lunch at 11:30. i ate 3 slices (from an 8 sliced medium pie) for dinner at 6:30; No sauce, with spinach and pineapple, (both cooked perfectly by different managers… )
i ate a special size salad with dinner, and had a couple glasses of the Satchel’s white wine, Las Brisas, from Spain… and i still feel guilty for not goin back in a third time, just to help bus tables and chat with customers about their experiences..

everyone knows i’m crazy and jah know that lightnin’ strikes twice and the silos are going to rock da house come satuday nex.
even if they don’t know a single reggae tune.
their whole deal is reggae garage band rock, how much cooler can you get?

the robot on the left, that is me. the robot on the right, that is you.

who the heck is reading this thing anyway?

today i lost my cell phone. actually i lost it last night but i didn’t find it this morning. anyway, it was pretty weird going about my day without it. turns out as soon as i left the house, c tried to start her car but it was dead, because the kids leave the lights on in there. she tried to jump it but had no luck and ended up driving my 1980 chevy custom deluxe truck around all day… and she had a lot of errands to run too, even out past the mall…

a cool truck to drive anyway though

and so, i ended up being disoriented enough by this dilemna that i started painting a red design on the side of satchels pizza that i’ve been wanting to paint for some time but never found the time… without a cell phone i had more time, no interruptions, no calls to make. i didn’t even have anyone’s number handy. heck, i didn’t even know what time it was.

later when i got home i found my cell phone, in the pocket of a jacket i never wear except i had put it on briefly to go get the garbage can from the road. and then i was complete again except that my ipod decided to break and now it won’t do anything so i’m letting the battery run dead and hope it re-boots tomorrow. c tells me that with mercury in retrograde these things are bound to happen… she may be right.

i also received my copy of come on like the fast lane, the silos new release that was released today and since i ordered it a couple weeks ago they mailed it to arrive on the release date. i only listened to it once so far but i like it a lot.
it’s late and i’m working on the poster for the reggae show coming up in april. because jah know that lightnin’ strikes twice!

today is monday, one of my days off… i went to work 3 times. i met the plumber there to fix some drainage to the sink in the cash station to the tune of nearly $500. i went to lowe’s and wal-mart and bought things for the restaurant, like staplegun staples and fans for the van, vinyl patch for a ripped booth, and lightbulbs… and then checked back in on the plumbers and got the ipod to update… later in the day i went back to build a new shelf in the kitchen and meet a guy to show me how to change the oil in the dough mixer. tonight i built a lawn chair in the living room while the kids watched curious george and i listened to the music… jack johnson did the sountrack and i love it.
so this weekend we got a sink fixed and a new shelf and the oil changed on the hobart and i even re-glued a threshold down and tried to patch one of the booths but i think i’ll have to end up re-upholstering the whole seat. they were all done a couple years ago but the guy did a crappy job because 4 or 5 of them are tearing. i went to ask the guy about it and he blew me off like that was normal. oh yeah, it’s normal to spend over $2000 to reupholster my booths every 2 years. ha. i should divulge the name of the business but i won’t. i’ll just not be reccommending that fella for any upholstry business.

the photo is from our grand opening of LSE, december 9, 2006. that’s Burney D and Banjo Jack, a.k.a. Swing Central Entertainment Group, formerly known as The Bow’ry Boys… they are pretty unique…

the Silos are coming with Jon Dee Graham in a couple weeks. i’m a little worried that we won’t get a good crowd. i know it’ll still be a blast but it sure would be nice to turn out 100 people for a good show like that…i should probably do a better job of promoting it but i am so busy… and how much energy can i give it?

i’m glad Mark is back this week… enough of all that honeymoon business, time to get back to work… oh, and shon got married last week and didn’t even take a day off work or ask for presents or nothin’. that is so like shon. he has a routine goin’ on, he’s not going to break up his routine to get married… i love these guys. i got such a great bunch of people i get to work with. sure wish peet would get back in town too. these people think they can just leave town on a dime and get people to fill in for them… maybe i need to leave town for a few days and get people to fill in for me….

good night party people

the azaleas are my favorite flower. i love how profusely they bloom in the spring. everytime they bloom i run out and buy a few in pots and search for ground to plant them in. this year they were just getting going good and the freeze came and wiped them out. that was sad for me. i’ll miss them. at least i got a picture a couple days ago.
i’ve got 3 lists going… 1. things to do at work. 2. things to do at home. 3. things to discuss with the managers.
my mind is pretty boggled these days. i’ve got way too much going on. gotta go kiss the kids goodnight…

c made me join this silly contest, the abdominator, and that means being photographed and agreeing to give $10 to the winner (most improved over 90 days.) the amazing thing about this “contest” that Peet came up with, is that all the people who signed up have unbelievably great abs. i wish i could post all the photos to show you that these are the best abs you ever saw in your life!, not the photo i’m showing you obviously of my “abs” but the photos of ALL the other people who signed up for the abdomintor… i joined because #1. c made me. and #2. i thought there shoud be a token fat guy to make the thing more interesting.
No. i do not plan to change my eating or my non- exercise habits for this contest.
yes, i plan to pay the winner $10 because i want to show my support as the boss.

i never thought in a million years i would post a pic of my belly online… c nearly had a heart attack laughing as she drew this horse on my stomach. i am posting this so that the other participants in the abdominbator can and will agree to their pics being posted so that we might expand the “judging” phase to a broader audience.

i am now finished with my back to back friday/ saturday doubles in the kitchen. it was overall a good weekend, despite the fact that we basically went down in flames as we delivered the wrong calzone to the wrong person, re-made the wrong calzone and found out it was still wrong a second time, and finally at 10:30 pm delivered the right calzone, undercooked, to the right person, an hour late…
and had to heat and add anchovies to a large pie at the same time because somebody, namely me, forgot to put them on there before we baked the pizza.
but i still chalk it up as a good weekend because:
1. we had a mad musician and a sick musician cancel and we learned a lot and found a nice entertainer replacement.
2. people were waiting for a table even though it was about minus a million and ten degeees outside. (i thought this was a phenomenon until matt told me that he waited 45 minutes for a table on friday night at applebees. for the record, he wasn’t going to actually eat at applebees but just meet some family and get a drink.)
3. even though both my kitchen managers are out of town and in la la love land with their freshie mamas… we managed to survive and get through it wihtout too much incedent, except for the ones previously mentioned and those might have happened anyway all except me working two doubles in a row…
and 4. my mom and sister and neice and nephew are coming to visit tomorrow and that will make my weekend a great one!

can you still love me if my belly is enlarged? but what if i’m on the pizza/ beer/ brownie diet? can’t i get points for that?

eat satchel’s pizza/ why? because we try hard.

at work, there is this thing, called the abdominator, where people try to see who gets most improved abs in 90 days. and the rules state you have to have 2 photos of “before”, front and side view.

man, was it a cold night. people waited like champions. people played live music like super champions. pies were looking top notch. yvan pointed out that both my kitchen managers are out of town and the place is running fine. i’m working doubles on friday and saturday, but yes, satchels is jammed packed with awesome employees and customers. i cannot say enough about the power house and the title town.

i heard 2 rumors tonight. one is that cindi lauper had a bird s%&* in her mouth when she was singing one time. and the other is that pq dropped out of the adominator competition 2007.

go gators #1.

valentine’s day 2007. i spent my day at the restaurant, checking in on a cooler, cleaning out the silver boy (shed), re-organizing the silver boy (now that’s love), putting in a new booth at LSE, listening to some live music, and eating a pesto pizza with the in-laws, and my wife and kids… the place was humming along nicely all day, and me and the family even ate lunch together at Sonny Tillman’s place, Caroline and I had on matching “Satchel’s is for Lovers” t-shirts, and our kids had on matching red shirts with hearts sewn on by their very own minko (grandmother). we sat there all in our bright red and we sorta stood out, like we were the only ones celebrating Valentine’s Day… my son figured it was a holiday and he didn’t have to go to school. my wife decided to make valentines’ with the kids and deliver them to people we love… it just makes me sick with the sweetness of it all…

silas also came up with several new t-shirt ideas tonight on the way home from dinner. working with the satchel’s is for lovers theme, he claimed “satchels is for pirates” and told me to draw a pirate ship on the back… “satchel’s is for rednecks” in which i decided i should draw myself on the back, with my handlebar moustache and nascar hat, but C said it should say “satchel IS a redneck”… he came up with “satchel’s is for acrobats” and finally he says, “now this is a crack up, this one… Satchel’s is for customers…

and the photo above is a poster that john and i are working on… it’s going to be a full color poster now keep in mind… the jamaican flag is a nice touch i think. the photos in sepia tone, very cool. still lots to do there but a sneak peek for people in the know you know.

jah live.

yesterday mark got married. c and i had a great time at the wedding although i was worried about the restaurant for a while and frustrated that getting both heaters on was an unobtainable task without me. today i woke up and baked a cake, went to work and removed and cleaned the oven stones, went out to melrose and met friends to celebrate c’s birthday, and came home and painted a lightnin’ slavage sign that will go on the satchel’s building above a new board that will advertise things going on back there. tomorrow is actually c’s birthday and so she wants and deserves my undivided attention for the day. should be fun. maybe we’ll even go out for dinner.
the photo has nothing to do with anything mentioned here, it was just an old one i dug up for the sake of nostalgia.

tonight was busy, as every friday night is. things went okay i guess. i was having some trouble with the ovens. seems the stones need to be taken out and cleaned real good. i’ve got a wobbly stone on the bottom left, and some spots that seem to be causing holes in pies and zones. table 11′s order didn’t get turned in. they had 2 steak calzones. we made them as fast as we could but then in the speed to cook them, one of them blew a hole out in the bottom and got soggy. after that things went downhill. pies kept getting holes, i kept trying to get the pies arranged properly. my fatigue was showing…
when i’m cooking i want to be the best there is. i want to be the master of my ovens. tonight my ovens got the better of me.
the band was loud but good. we had Peet on salads and he was great to have around, even after working a double.
it’s almost 2 am. the day manager, Mark, is getting married tomorrow so i went out to share a drink and get something to eat besides pizza. it’s way too late for me. good night.

the number 6 car i think i bought at a thrift store. the 3 under it were all my personal creations when i was in the pinewood derby. the trophy someone else brought in. the pinewood derby was cool. i was a scout and we all got blocks of wood to carve and paint and race. there was a long track and we met up at the methodist church. my cars weren’t winners, or if they one a couple rounds, they did not win the whole derby. but they looked good and that’s what really counts, right?
making and racing those cars is one of my clearest of childhood memories. and painting cars is a hobby i still haven’t given up.

lately i’ve been enjoying drawing with markers. it’s something i have always loved to do but i also don’t do very often. but since silas is old enough to also enjoy drawing, we have been having some drawing sessions on the dining room table lately. i have a pretty good collection of nice markers and i just need to build up my kids marker collection some more. i am so manic during my days that the drawing helps me unwind at night when i’m not at work. and speaking of work, i am coming to terms with the fact that i must take some nights off. working one shift a day is enough. working split shifts once in while is fine. working doubles sometimes is unavoidable. but striving for the one shift a day is ideal. usually it’s tues and wed day, thurs split, and fri and sat night. i love my job. sometimes too much. sometimes i let it all get to me and take it all too seriously.

it is only pizza after all.

today i picked up the pieces of two broken whitlygig spinners and for an instant i considered the task of making a whirlygig out of these two starter pieces, and nailing it to the satchel’s sign. this would be incredible fun for me. so much so that it might get me in trouble with my wife for not working but playing; “june bugging” as she likes to claim i do. i held those peices in my hand for a good 30 seconds as i considered the task and how much fun it would be, and then i put them down, thought about how much the tool room needed to be organized instead, and went to run the other errands i was slated to do for the day. harvest thyme switched from pepsi to coke and was giving me some unused pepsi products. sweet dreams was unloading a great extra booth that i could use in lightnin’ salvage… i love that the local businesses are connected like they seem to be. i know the satchel’s bookkeeper helps out with the bakery books… we eat at the jones and vice versa…
anway, i was feeling pretty sorry for harvest thyme because they are just entering their coke years… i’m glad to be through them already. maybe they have more luck than i did, i certainly hope so. put it this way: switching soda companies at your restaurant is not something you want to do, it’s something you are forced into for reasons beyond your control. the company you are using, be it coke or pepsi, start driving you out of your mind for some long list of growing reasons, and you finally snap and call the other guy. at that point it may be 6 months before your daily routine is back to normal. i could go into all the reasons it drives you nuts, but it’s not worth it. i’ve said it before… if i had to open any other business, i would try and come up with a local alternative to coke and pepsi. i believe it could be done. i’m not saying it would be easy, but it could be done… but i’m not gonna do it…

watering my plants is like drawing. it helps me unwind and process my mind. i get so kinked up and so high strung in my days. i guess i try and do too much, tackle more than i can actually acheive… but the plants move slowly. they grow slowly. they even bloom, some of them, sometimes. this one is probably my favorite flower. i broke a peice from a plant at my great aunts house many years ago. aunt lillian lived in a cute house, right behind the main street publix, just a block from the 2nd street bakery. she lived there since God was a little boy. she was in her late 90′s when she died a few years back. well, that little clipping i got from her, i didn’t know what it was, but one day it just busted out with this flower. it’s bigger than my hand and i have big hands. i live in my granny’s house now, aunt lillian was her sister.

i took down my paintings yesterday. the one pictured is my favorite. i sold all the paintings but one and the one that didn’t sell is one i really like, so i’ll frame it and keep it. the new show is high school students from Eastside High School. it is a great show, with all different styles of work. i love seeing students work, because teenagers have things they need to express. art is a healthy outlet. i know when i was a teenager, i needed to paint my car, and my walls, and anything really. i spray painted football feilds, and even the county dock on the st. johns river. i was a bit of a vandal but in a modest way. i remember making a stencil and spray painting it around Atlanta. one said, “halle” and under that “lujah”. another one said “be polite”. i think there was one that said “slow down” and under that “enjoy life.” whish is ironic because i go at about a million miles a second and i have no clue how to slow down, although i do enjoy life.
i’m supposed to be doing the dishes but i am procrastinating. it’s only 11:30pm anyway. i made 2 new menu backs today, i started them yesterday. numbers 22 and 23. i put up colored plastic sheets in the screen porch at satchel’s today. these big blocks of translucent colored acrylic let colored light flood in the porch and it’s like a spiritual experience. it was an overcast day and the light coming through those panels was filling me with wonder. i can’t wait to see them on a clear day, i’m almost tempted to drive up there now and see how it looks with the christmas lights on inside, pushing the color out by night.
i feel like an architect. i have visions for this porch… tomorrow i’ll get some stained glass too, eventually we’ll build in some booth seats, hang some japanese lanterns, re-paint brighter colors, hopefully even mosaic the floor…
i better go do the dishes… i want to start my day early and be out of the house by 8.

blogging twice in the same day is overboard i know. i should be watching the superbowl or something. but we picked up food from liquid ginger and once i got home we realized the whole order was not there. i wrote a menu back recently too praising how liquid ginger never makes mistakes… which goes to prove that no one is infallible.
i’m just randomly picking photos now to post. here’s one a day after i painted my brand new truck flat primer grey. i thought i just wanted it flat grey but the grey turned out too light, and then i decided to paint one orange stripe, and then got carried away. i’ll throw in a newer picture too.
caroline is busting me from behind…
“what you doing over there blogger?”
“nothing,” i spin around in my desk chair, sip my wine, act casual.
“just hangin’ out on my day off. you know, unwinding, looking aound…”

i’ve got a problem, i know. too many projects. projects coming out my ears.
the kids skipped nap though which means we’ll have them in bed by 8, and then we’ll watch a movie because we finally broke down and decided to get a TV. after over 20 years without one… but we don’t have cable, just the built in dvd player so we can watch the occasional movie.

liquid ginger let me down, but luckily i had the better half of that delicious satchel’s calzone, so i called back and got them to credit my card… i just didn’t want to drive back in town. it was a big deal to get myself there in the first place. it’s cold and i live in the country…

it’s a saturday night. i’m tired. it was a great weekend at the restaurant, but friday night i blew my cool at the very end of the night. after a flawless night, i left the kitchen at 9:45 and came back in at 10:10 to find a burnt calzone. i lost it. i blew up. i went crazy on some people. anyway, i felt pretty bad later about freaking out so hard so i stayed up late drawing and writing and wasn’t in bed until 3am. of course my boy silas was up at 6:45, trying to add water to his humidifier, and making himself cereal, and being quite awake. tonight was smooth. the worst part again revolved around a calzone. at the end of the night i made myself a calzone: steak, basil, feta, bacon, tomatoes, and zucchini. when it was delivered to the office the bottom was white, totally uncooked dough, but the top looked fine. i didn’t freak out though, i just showed the guy what it looked like. of course, i hate to get my food under or over cooked but what worries me even more is what is going out to the customers. if the cook doesn’t cook my food right, then how do i know the other food has been right? these questions keep me up at night.
it was cold outside but people waited anyway, God bless ‘em. people even eating outside and the temperature has to be in the 40′s. i’m working hard on closing in a new outside area so we can heat it. i’ll probably get it finished by the time the cold weather is gone. you know, we can mainly only work on these things on sundays and mondays when we’re closed and i’m supposed to be off then…. so, these things get drawn out sometimes.
the cool photos above are compliments of lightnin’ salvage enterprises.