last weekend we had 9 guys show up at the beach for the first ever “guys weekend”. since some of the antics are not suitable for all viewers, i’ve made this video private. if you know the password you can view it by clicking on the link for guys weekend under the image and putting the password in. if you don’t know the password, you probably wouldn’t want to see it anyway. if you work at satchel’s you can get the password by asking me.

guys weekend 2009 from satchel raye on Vimeo.

you see, THIS is what makes your life interesting. viewing photos of fossilized poop on the world-wide-web through your favorite pizzzeria’s owners blog…this poop is on display in lightnin’ salvage currently…the newsletter is on it’s way… there is different info there than here… the info here is more graphic and for specialized viewers only… and you now know that tonight we had two injuries and sent 2 employees home even before the rush ( a burn and a bruise). soooo…. it was a bit on the challenging side but here’s a shot i got… large major, medium garlic artichoke hearts and bacon, and large half banana peppers, green peppers and feta and half black olives, red onions and roasted red peppers…

this weekend could get interesting…
i will let you know.

our local station, TV20, ran a short feature on us tonight, click here for the link to the video.

we were busy tonight, we actually filled the ovens at one point and had a pie waiting to go in… maybe it was thanks to TV20, maybe KCountry, as i heard that one of the deejays was in last night and said he had a good time and would talk about us on his morning show this morning.

i’m about to send out a newsletter, so if you haven’t signed up yet, go to the homepage and look for the signup at the top of the page. i know it’s redundant, to have a newsletter and a blog. really, if i have a blog then why do i need a newsletter? well, i’m not sure. i went to a lot of trouble to set up the newsletter and collect emails, and i guess the reason is that i don’t expect those hundreds of people to keep up with a weekly blog, but a monthly newsletter they can handle… but so far i am having just a tiny bit of trouble trying to figure out how to make the newsletter interesting and with different info than the blog. anyway, i hope to get a newsletter out tomorrow night so there you go. if you get the newsletter then you will be entirely up to date with the public available info on our humble pizzeria, and you might start to see, like me, just what new info is there that you don’t get here…

click the link to the news story. i must admit, i didn’t want to do the story, i hate seeing myself on camera sometimes, and i was worried it would be all cheesy. but then this woman, erica, shows up and does the whole thing herself… she filmed me, interviewed me and then edited and put together the whole segment. she’s easy to like and i was impressed with her skills. so, it was erica that made me feel at ease and finally erica who put together what surprised me as a great little home-town piece. i was nervous when i was spinning the pizza so it looks like i’m an amatuer, and when i mentioned the pecans we get form a tallahassee pecan man, i should have made a joke about the seminoles, but overall i thought it was some of the best reporting done on the place, and it was done much better than the may southern living article that mentioned us and got it pretty much wrong. however, i should mention that the one paragraph in the new york times was written very well, and is a close second to erica’s video.

there’s a 30 second commercial you have to watch before the piece, but hey, it’s america.

here’s a shot from april 9 2006. i was in the process of painting my truck. it really could use an updated paint job at this point. it looks good but i could even start over and do another design in new colors… but i probably won’t. there is so much to do and we are in desperate need of a better camera at this point. i should have a personal camera at my disposal very soon. there is a slight chance new pictures will soon be posted, however, it’s sort of fun to dig out these old ones… here’s another: dated april 28th of the same year…

and the latest date i could find, july 3rd, 2009:

it’s not that i am nuts for the honda ridgeline, i could write extensively about the problems i have with the truck. but i do enjoy the moving metal as art concept. i just wish i could paint a different car every year and since i can’t i’ll keep tweaking this paint job…50,000 miles already. i’ve got to at least watch it go past 130k…

this photo will only be interesting to folks who know what LSE looks like now… these pictures from march 3, 2006, isn’t that the first day we opened? well, that’s not bad for day 1, right?
anyway, i am sorry for not keeping you updated. showing you a 3+ year old picture is evidence of my slack-ness in the blog department. shoot, i am so behind the times, i do not even keep up with my blogs, the ones i like to visit everyday, but now am out of touch with the internet…

with family in town for extended stays, i am happy to say i am enjoying some time away from my regular routine, and away from the computer and only loose contact with the phone, well, loose by my standards and tight by other standards… i am getting some needed perspective on my projects, and trying to understand how to …”weave it all together, like a fabric or a quilt…” to quote the practically unknown new film, Lightnin’ Salvage, the Movie.

there was a time, not so long ago, when i thought that i had to make every single pizza for it to be perfect, and fortunately i have wised up. i heard a story on npr the other day about a conductor. for some reason i thought, ” i wonder what the new york philharmonic would sound like without a conductor?” it’s a weird thought from the start and later i realized it was connected to the fact that at times i wonder if that is what a conductor does, pulls back entirely, feels the music a bit, breathes the music a bit, and then dives back in? anyway, i wonder if there are recordings of what i described?

here’s another snapshot to leave you with…

notice the happy customers, and notice the piano in the dining room… the more things change…