i added this site to the blogroll, over on the right of the screen, obama art report, it’s worth taking a look at. very inspiring artwork related to obama and his grassroots sort of movement.
the blog seems to change daily and i always see great art there. maybe even check out the archives…

don’t miss holopaw this tuesday night at lightnin’ salvage at 10pm. you know we don’t do this often so make a plan and come out and support your local junk shop.

it was a good weekend. slow thursday and friday because of fay, but saturday was back to normal. i cooked all the pies saturday night and honestly i saw lots of perfect pies. i was pretty happy with how well most of them turned out. the english department had a big pizza party too, 22 pies. i hope they were good. the chemistry department, the english department , and of course the philosophy department, they all tend to get a satchel’s party every year. i think those are the best 3 departments. i felt bad for the sorority house the other day who contacted us about a pizza party and ended up with pizza hut. they got our salad but i guess we were too expensive… which i think is strange because i’ve gotten pizza hut before and it was more expensive than us, and about half as good. anyway, english, chemistry and philosophy, those are the subjects to study at UF. those are the departments that are going somewhere.

i love the no flash natural evening light at LSE. just take a good look at this place. is it heaven?
the shop was a trickle of people tonight. we even cancelled the band because of the storm. there were a good deal of folks who had to come get some pizza, despite the rain, and i’m glad for those folks. i was able to tinker some in LSE, fix a broken fiber optics flower, hang a new thrift store painting, hang and light one of our newest latest satchel’s official golf umbrellas. that’s right, you didn’t misread that, we now have official umbrellas with hearts and gainesville and satchel’s all protecting you from fay and other rainy days. it’s a 60″ umbrella so there’s room for the family under there. come get one while they last. sure to be collectible.

it was a slow night and tomorrow may be also, but i was glad to get some free time to tinker and decorate. the store didn’t flood which is a good sign. the rain barrels filled up, at least the 1000 gallon one did. so, i was draining it in case more rain comes overnight.

funny how much other stuff i have to do besides make pizza. i did notice the salads were a bit heavy on the dressing and tried to correct that, and the pies were a bit heavy on the cheese and tried to correct that, so i wasn’t checked out completely from the food.

i always dreamed if how LSE would give me the outlet to tinker and feel like an old man and make things form trash to hang about…. and so far i’m usually way too busy with the larger picture to have fun like that. teresa, our office manager, has come up with a great plan to offer grants to non profits who need funds. so, in the near future we will be working up the guidelines for how to apply for these grants quarterly and use some profits to give back to the community.
biodegradable to-go containers are also right around the corner. keep checking in and i’ll keep you posted about all the newest latest. i may even decide to let folks sign up to recieve a text message when i decide when we’re going to open satchel’s by the sea st. sugustine. t-shirts will be out real real soon.

john orth filmed this. i did no editing at all as he just filmed it just a you see it. pretty amazing really. i just added some music and edited the sound a bit. anyway, here it is hot off the youtube.

this is a close up of some of the new things found on the fountain-0-junk. i worked on it a bit today. all the new elements are lifting up, pipes, metal rods, gutter pieces.
we also went in on our day off to cook 40 pizzas for the UF chemistry department welcome back party. those pies looked awesome but they eat them faster than we can cook them, i know that. we delivered the first 20 large pies and they were gone in 10 minutes.
i’m excited about the fountain, but i am hoping that this tropical storm fay doesn’t knock out all my hard work. i need to add a few more bags of concrete before it’s cat 5 ready.

keep checking back for updates. i’ll keep you hip to all the latest info coming out of east g’ville.

well, a pretty good weekend. we were busy and there were few problems for as much food as we put out. tonight, saturday, i cooked up some great grub, and the only mistake i remember are onions were left of one pie. man were we ever slammed in there… i mean we had an hour and a half wait for to-go pies and 45 minutes plus for lots of in house pies. we have the best crew ever, like the olympic team of pizzerias, but we can only go so fast. we feed a lot of people.

it’s been a great summer. i honestly hate to see it go. since school starts monday and i’ll be getting up at 6 am, i am mourning the loss of summer and all that extra time with my kids. i liked the less than crowded roads. but i like gator football as much as the next guy, and i know the cool weather will be a welcome change.

i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again, i am pretty sure we have the best crew of people anywhere. they are all so smart and hard working and funny and pleasant. i truly love my employees and think of them all as friends.

we’ve got a great late night show coming up in just over a week. tuesday night, august 26th, a brooklyn based band, lucinda black bear, is coming through and playing and also local boys holopaw. show starts at 10 pm and cost $6. come our for a good night of jams.

i wish i had one of these cars that converts to an airplane. i saw this at a museum in seattle. you could take off the wings and tail and hang them on the car. in 30 minutes you could set up the wings and tail and take off. man is that cool.
thanks to danny for having an iphone and getting that last picture of the rain barrel. nice shot, that one. i just love those barrels. we got both hooked up today and water is already going in there. next we just need to get a pump and pressure tank to make using the water easy.
i think we will pass on the solar for now. i have been gathering a lot of info and have just a little yet to gather but it seems that everything is steering me away from it right now. no time to go into details…
however, we are changing to biodegradable to-go containers soon and nixing the styrofoam. and the rain barrels may be flushing the toilets soon…
shon had his big ol’ baby boy. he also informs me that he reads the blog. that shon is the prep king and if you ever loved our crust it’s thanks to shon (and gabe). but shon has a new boy and we are all so happy for he and ruth. danny and pam’s new boy is doing good too and they are almost ready to move into a new house. having babies, buying houses… we sure have some mature and cool people working at Satchel’s/ LSE.

and here is one of the rain barrels i told you about. there are 2. this one is getting moved over the building to get set in place behind the building. 1650 gallons this baby will hold.

still looking into solar. gathering info. i have one source who tells me the energy it takes to make solar panels is far greater than the energy we would use hooked up to the grid. in other words, the “carbon footprint” of the panels is greater than the footprint of just being on the grid. as for dollar savings… i am still trying to determine how long it would take to make the money back…. 5 years? 10 years? all i can do is get some mathematicians to calculate some guesses.

we should be able to switch to sugarcane (biodegradable) to go containers soon. the question is do we eat the cost or do we charge the customer .50 for to go food?

we’ve got some busy times ahead… lots of big orders for student groups returning… should be big fun.

well, it is the end of a loooong week for me. i’m glad it’s over. i worked a lot since i was helping to cover the prep position. i’m real tired tonight. i even left before we closed which is rare for a saturday. it was a good weekend. things went smooth. seems like we sent out some great food. hope to see you all again next week. peace.

i wish everything had been going as good as this pizza… who makes pizza like this? who?

well, the top story is that Shon had the baby, well, his wife did all the work but Shon got a son out of the deal. he sounds real excited and why not? a 9 pound boy, a healthy wife, the baby is breast feeding already… a great story. so we have 2 August babies at Satchel’s, how awesome.

but now to bring things down a notch i must vent about my trials over the last two days. tuesday night i was making pies and then hear about a customer taking the wrong to-go pie. i questioned thoroughly who had given the man the wrong pie (because we all know to check the pie carefully before handing it over…) and was told repeatedly by more than one person that no one gave him the pie , he just took it. well… that has happened before. someone is waiting for their pizza and they see one come out of the kitchen and get set down and they think it’s theirs and they take it and go, except it’s not theirs… anyway, naturally, the people who are waiting for the pie that is now gone do not want the pie even though we have called the accused and he is on his way back with the pie, so i make another pie for those people who have already waited long enough and done nothing wrong. i decide i will go have a word with this guy who just “took” his pizza and tell him that’s not the way we do things here. only trouble is, i don;t factor in the new guy standing at the register with no idea of what is really going on. so i start laying into this customer (the wrong thing to do in any event) and he looks at me like i’m crazy, (which i am) and then we find out that he did not do anything wrong per se, but the new guy simply did not know to not let him have that particular pizza. new guy, common mistake… had our night manager been there i wouldn’t have been out there making a fool of myself because she would have handled it (and handled it better.) anyway, i’m sure that guy, i think is name is jim, will never come back and i don;t blame him. i was having a bad time and working with false intelligence.
then, tonight, wednesday, i get a call that the toilets are down. well, those toilets go down way too often. i just spent $300 2 weeks ago getting the lines all cleaned to avoid these type of problems… but a tampon wrapped in brown towels is not only going to stop up one toilet, but it’ll make all 3 toilets stop working and ruin a few people’s night. i thought, like a fool, i could snake it and spent $100 at lowe’s on various tools and liquids only to find i could not fix it. while i’m in the office calling a plumber a man comes in to pay his bill and the salad he had is not on his ticket, a problem which i fear plagues my restaurant, and one i am constantly trying to solve. people aren’t trying to give away food, they are just in too much of a hurry to get it all on a ticket properly… so i lose it. right there i blow a fuse, not a 20 amp fuse either but a 50 amp fuse… one of those 2 pole fuses like for a water heater of stove.
anyway, if i could have handled the ticket situation, i would have come out alright at the end. in my calm moments i always convince myself that i will become the cucumber during the next crisis… and i alway turn into texas pete… but next time, next time… my brain is so crazed to find a solution… i spend so much time trying to think of a better system… maybe a different kind of ticket where we won;t even make a salad without a ticket, but then what do we do about beers?
anyway, i found a company to fix the drain, DR. Drain, who had the right equipment and fixed it in less than 30 minutes. i spent the rest of the night trying to clean the ladies room back up. the “clog” was 75 feet down the line so all my little fixes were not even close to the solution. i started early this morning working for Shon. i worked over 12 hours today and i’ll be back bright and early tomorrow. and then we have graduation weekend and three of our eight pizza makers out this weekend. we need 6 a day…
anyway, i still love my job but weeks like this i know i earn my paycheck.

finally, shout out to my home girl leah, who says she reads the blog… my guess is i have about 30 blog readers out there and i know of at least 10… when i put up a youtube video i get about 30 views so that’s how i guess.
leah reads it, can you believe that? one might think she was too cool to read this… but then she admitted that she wanted to see if i was saying bad stuff about her.
hey people… check out the LSE myspace page.

here we are in the dog days of summer where the days are long and hot and muggy and there’s just nothin’ to do… except my boy keeps me busy. he’s a fireball of creation.

just got home from a nice friday night. boilin’ oil played LSE and people love boilin’ oil. the picture here is some crazy women folk i chatted with at the end of the night. 3 sisters here, and one daughter, and there’s more sisters that aren’t in the picture. i said, “where are the men?” and this woman was telling me they were all in the trunk. the one in white there, that’s her new one month old baby and his (i think it was a he??) first trip out was to satchel’s… nice. anyway, that woman was telling me she wanted to get the satchel’s in the trunk bumper sticker but i told her we never had a sticker like that. she swears she saw it and i think she’s crazy. anyway, they were having a good time even though one lady had a few too many beers and kept asking me for a free pitcher and i’m thinkin’, “this lady needs a pitcher of water!” no, i’m just teasing them now… one of them said she reads the blog so i’m giving them a hard time.
i got to walk through the dining room a few times and talk to a few customers tonight. i am always so impressed with all the great folks who come and wait and enjoy themselves despite the long waits. everyone seems so happy, like the guy from virginia, who said he left virginia this morning and called up to reserve a deep dish and then hit 95 south at 100 miles an hour to get here. his deep dish looked awful good… or the woman from hawaii who can’t have wheat and was moving to gainesville and searching online for where she could get a gluten free pizza and said when she got off the plane she went straight to satchel’s… or the girl who was showing photos to her friends on the computer, of her trip to spain and morocco… i ended up telling them some about my travels abroad and then one girl in the group, was it anna? busted out that she had just found out her sister was pregnant and then she tells the 6 of us…”she wasn’t supposed to tell anyone.” there was the party with 2 birthdays who gave me the leftovers from their giant chocolate chip cookie, and the leftovers we got of the ice cream cake. it was just a good time and the pies were looking perfect and there was only one minor mistake. it was totally the opposite of last saturday when everything went wrong and i nearly checked myself into the crazy house and took all day sunday to recover…
we are going to have some late night shows coming up soon. there are two planned for august and one for september and one in october. keep a lookout for the posters when you’re up there and come out for some interesting music. the next show is august 16th and it’s a benefit for a new publication called the fine print. the show will start at 10pm with 3 bands.
thanks to all who came out this week and for all the great customers.