here’s my boy, catching a fish, on a feild trip with his class. he’s quite a kid… makes me happy just thinking about him.

the gators won tonight, of course, and i’m trying to draw up a cool t-shirt but so far nothing can express the greatness of the win they will have monday night. i’ll probably spend the next two days working on a design.

friday night was a great night at satchel’s. i worked the ovens and was pretty wiped out by it. we made no mistakes i can remember and pies were flying out. tonight, saturday, was pretty slow because of basketball. taxidermy recital played lightnin’ salvage and they were pretty cool. two young girls with hearts drawn on their cheeks, singing some funny songs. tonight the mistakes kept coming though, like the pie that we forgot mushrooms and after we sauteed them on the stove, they looked like canned mushrooms. we forgot tomatoes on a pie, feta on another pie, extra cheese on a pie. artichokes on one slice and meatballs on another… i don’t know what was going on. if it was basketball we were shooting bricks. fortunately we corrected our mistakes quickly and because we weren’t slammed we never got far behind. oh, i do remember now last night the one tragic mistake i made… i was supposed to cook that medium pie and 2 calzones LIGHT COOK! and i cooked them regular. i felt pretty bad but i didn’t do a thing about it. i should have gone and apologized at least, or given the guy a free dessert or SOMETHING. i felt pretty bad about it later. light cook is one of the hardest things for me to do. i’m used to cooking them all the same. crispy.

anyway, all that is behind me now. the gators won. we’re going to the beach tomorrow to play with our kids. my mom is moving to gainesville soon. my ipod fixed itself. life is wonderful.

thanks to all the great customers who come to satchel’s. coming up this next wednesday is my 9 year anniversary with my wife and also some live music at lightnin’ salvage that should be interesting. come if you can, wish me a happy anniversary, and i’ll buy you a drink.

cheers.

yesterday my wife and i switched cars so she could take more kids to a feild trip. we switched all our junk, including ipods. i had to drive her car all over town and even to alachua. but as soon as i tried to hook up my ipod, no go. it wouldn’t come on at all, dead. i assumed when i got home i could hook it up to the computer and everything would be okay. no such luck. nothing happens. dead as a doorknob. but less useful than a doorknob. it’s not even that old. i guess i should have paid that blackmail fee for the extended warranty. lord knows i don’t have time to figure out how to fix the thing. why couldn’t it have been my cell phone that broke? i think i might actually be happy about that.

pictured here is my neice and my daughter. we went to ravine gardens last weekend for a little cookout and walk about.
my mom, being the eternal first grade teacher, had everything planned, even down to the activity dessert, armpit fudge.
you put ingredients in a baggy and then squish it together under you arm, open the baggy… fudge. yummm.
the adults decided to squish the baggies in their hands, thank you very much, and the boys made great use of their armpits of course.
tonight me an the mrs got to go out on a date. we went to dragonfly and the gelato place, one of our favorite dates. we had some extra time and ended up actually going to a movie because we got there and there was one starting at that moment: astronaut farmer. it was an after school special sort of movie. about a man and his dream. he was obsessed with building a rocket in his backyard. i couldn’t help but feel inspired and conected to the man, as i am obsessed with building the worlds’ best pizzeria in my backyard. i liked it. it was my kind of movie. cheesy, inspiring, feel good. my favorite line was the last line in the movie. the farmer guy had finally succeeded launching into space AND returning safely to his family. his family picks him up on the side of the road, he gets in the suburban and his family is all freaking out with joy and love and amazement and you hear the daughter say as they drive off, “let’s go to a restaurant and get pizza.” “okay,” the guy says.

i was driving this around last year about now. it wasn’t the right car for me though. too hard to get in and out. i liked it but i’m too big, or it’s too small for me. i sold it on ebay for $6100

tonight we were cranking out the pies again. i still can’t get over this newfound knowledge that allows us to cook pies twice as fast without sacrificing any quality. i guess that’s why they say experience is the best teacher. we were real busy but pies were all out in 30 minutes or less. regular customers will really start to notice a difference on the weekends. we are much faster.

memphis lost and so i’m out of the race to win the bracket. looks like matt has it in the bag. i guess mark has a shot maybe still too. as long as the gators win, that’s all i care about.

two days off…. ahhh. i can’t wait.

harun was back for a cameo tonight, as gail is out of town i think. lots of people like this guy. i can’t figure out why?? lol

the pies are cooking real nice, real crispy, and fast. we had two soggy pies, one big hole in a pie, and forgot green olives on one pie. other than that it went great. (although i was dragging on those 2 slices with feta basil by a few minutes…)
to go pies were all over the board. in house business was slower than usual. i think the people like basketball.
we listened to the game in the kitchen. it was pretty exciting as you all know. i’m doing pretty good in the b-ball bracket at work, i’m tied for second place. if memphis goes to the championship game then i’ll win, and then the gators will beat memphis of course.

the tonewelders played lightnin’ salvage. too bad there wasn’t as big a crowd as usual tonight. they play some great tunes.

tomorrow i have to go meet at the mall for family photos with my in-laws. i can’t say i’m looking forward to it. can’t we just have a bar-b-q over here and set up the camera on self time?

i ended up at larry’s subs for lunch becasue i had to meet someone and they were there and i was hungry. their chicken parm sub was actually better than the ones i’ve had at a couple of the pizza places around town. i was starving at work all night and those pies looked so good. last night i made myself a little pizza and only ate half of it. so i came home tonight and heated up a slice of it, oh man was it good. just as good as yesterday if not better. i’m tempted to heat the other slice but i know i may want it tomorrow.

by the way, new t-shirts are in: satchel’s is for pirates. satchel’s is for rednecks coming soon.

you’re likely to remember st. patricks day this year if you were at lightnin salvage.

first, whitey markle took the stage. good ol’ whitey played his down home cracker music and could have pleased a crowd of a thousand. later, rusty swing and the ones to blame got up there and took care of business. people were screaming and having a good time. if you missed it, you’re advised to catch our next show. if you were there then you know what i mean. i always have a good time at lightnin’ salvage.

here’s that photo from last year. these guys are back, up to their same tricks but with about 15 more people.
hope they see this.

tonight was a breakthrough for me. i learned something new about the ovens that i had maybe once known but forgot. in messing with the oven baffles, i was able to cook pizzas about twice as fast as normal. the pies were flying out tonight. a medium cheese at 7:30 took about 15 minutes from order being taken to table. i’m going crazy about this new knowledge. i can’t believe it took me 4 years to figure it out. i’ve got a much higher chance of burning a pie now because the ovens are so hot, but if i am on it, i can crank out those babies. which means that people will ge their food much faster, which is obviously good because the people are hungry.

there were a couple minor mistakes, but mostly it was pretty fun. the kitchen guys were telling jokes, the new booths on the screen porch seem to be working out. the pies were all looking good.

we got a bunch of rowdy race fans. i love those guys, ordering 7 meat toppings and extra cheese on their pies, drinking bud light like water. i need to go find the photo i took of them last year and put it on the website. they looked for it…
good night

figuring out what category for these blogs is not easy… is it home life? or work life? or both? my home life and work life are so closely connected. today was my day off and i was at work 4 different times, actually 5. we are getting some booths where there were picnic tables so that project was keeping me busy. tables A, B, and C are turning into A, B, Cada and Silas (4 booths.) they will spend a week unstained. the partitions between booths will take a few days to assemble… i have to start thinking about flooring…
silas and i made a sculpture tonight before bed. he came up with the idea and i obliged. he went on a treasure hunt recently and collected 20 or so “treasures” that are basically pieces of trash and junk he found in our yard or the yard next door. i got out a tube of gray caulk and we caulked all the treasures together into the sculpture titled: Silas’ Super Treasure Hunt Sculpture.
silas planned out the first part of the day tomorrow…. after a warm bowl of oatmeal with cinammon toast, we are supposed to make another sculpture using rocks he found and shells from the beach. Sunblocker Five, he wants to call it. sunblocker 1 and super sunblocker 2 are sandcastles we made at the beach, and sunblocker 3 and 4 are collages we made with rocks and shells in the last 2 years. so, the new sculpture is going to be sunblocker five, or the super sunblocker five universe or something like that. i think we need to actually make the sculpture before we name it…

we’re supposed to caulk shells together in a castle formation to make a scultpture. we haven’t made that one, but i’ll show you a photo of the one we did make, silas’super treasure hunt sculpture, 2007

friday night. slower than usual after 8pm. the basketball game. spring break has started.

jeff on oven. thin spots in the dough bringing us down. i forgot tomatos on a white pie. yvan forget onions on 2 slices of tomato and onion. jeff forgot that one cheese slice. joey keeping me laughing through it all. keeth like teeth and cory in a nuetral mood. it was a good night.

i’ve been reading up on the internet about dough and pizza baking. i’m interested to change the oven baffles and the oven temperature to see if we could cook the pies even faster than we do. i hate to mess with perfection but i do think i still have some things to learn about cooking the pies.

i’m obsessed. i am still hungry to make every pie the best thing you ever ate. the truth be told, only about 80% of all the pies on any given night are probably right. i guess that’s a pretty good percentage but seems like after doing it this long and this much, we could be 95%. i’m dreaming.

the rest of the truth be told, i must have the best bunch of employees this side of the rockies. they cover each others shifts, they clean the bathrooms even when they are really bad. they seem to care, even when customers are mean. they work hard, even when i’m freaking out.
tonight we had a toilet and a table leg break. the rumor was that some customer rigged the toilet to work temporarily, and the table leg will hold the table up for another week maybe.
bud and jerry were playing lightnin salvage and boy, aren’t they the best band for a hundred miles?

for breakfast i ate an apple and a chocolate cookie with peanut butter chips. i had pizza for lunch which i had a friend pick up and bring to the house: a slice of deep dish with pepperoni, beef, and zucchini, and a slice from a large with spinach, mushrooms, onions and meatballs. for dinner i had a slice from a kid’s pie, no sauce with pineapple, and some satch salad. that was all i ate today. (the large slice at lunch was soggy from the box and steam and being cut. not cutting the pie is so much better. i should have ordered it that way.)
i eat a lot of pizza. i must admit i went to big lou’s yesterday for lunch because i was downtown and wanted italian food. i got a chicken parm sub but the slices that went out to the table next to me looked pretty good. i wished i had gotten one. someone today busted me, said they saw me there. i wonder if anyone saw me the last time i picked up a personal pan from pizza hut? or if someone saw me eating domino’s at that kid’s birthday party? i wonder who’s watching me stare at the frozen pizza at publix?

the weather sure is perfect. here’s a shot i took on one of my days off. in the boat is my wife and kids. this weather just makes you wanna lay around in the sun all day.
i’m still in a good mood, left over from saturday night’s show. it was a great night.

not a very good picture i know, but a very good show no doubt.
i was expecting a lot of electric guitar and a huge crowd. what i got was oh so much better. an intimate crowd of fans and walter with an acoustic guitar playing lots of old songs seemlessly blended with new songs. it was like the best of the silos night and the songs were all adorned and drawn out and embellished until we were all begging for more. the night was gorgeous with a full moon, dark grey skies, fast rolling thin clouds and nostalgia. my wife even came out. i loved every minute of it.
one song was stuck in my head all day, drive around. i hummed it seems like for hours. the version they did of that was amazing, and i never even liked the song that much before yesterday…
…let’s do somethin dumb. let’s get in a fight. i’d rather get beat up, than sit around all night. let’s go get some life. let’s go get some sound …drive around. i turn on my radio. all i hear is metal and mowtown… drive around… drive a round…
i wish they played days gone by and if they did i missed it, but the show last night really proved to me that i love the music.

before i even got started renovating the old lightnin’ salvage warehouse, i was wishing i had a film crew who could be with us through the process to see the vision come to light. actually, what i tried to make happen was just simple audio of the process. i was hoping it could be an episode on npr’s this american life. i carried around a tape recorder for a while but i gave up on that a few months later. it was just me rambling on about all the obstacles we faced. it took about a year to actually just get the doors open and when we did open it wasn’t much to look at. it was mostly a junk shop, with a few collections on display. we were open only at night. it took 9 months to even put together a grand opening where we felt like the project was finally coming together.

tomorrow marks one year open and boy do i wish that film crew was on hand to put the finishing touches on lightnin’ salvage, the movie. tomorrow LSE will be packed all day and night, as saturdays seem to be the busiest day of the week for the shop. then, at 10, the late night show starts and here come the silos. it would have been a good movie, or at least a 30 minute after school special.
rock n roll, baby. all the party people will be at lightnin’ salvage tomorrow night.