the hoggetowne medieval faire has been going on a long time, and it was never anything i cared about checking out until the kids came along. then last year we finally took them to see what it was all about. they LOVED it. just in the last couple weeks my daughter has been asking to go back, even though she had no idea when it was and neither did we. then all of a sudden, it was here, and she had been asking several times to go. it was cold out there but we went and ran into lots of interesting creatures and characters, like these big people.

the big people from satchel on Vimeo.

the weekend at work was good. i lost it once when i noticed the band playing friday night had 9 members and was taking up one of our biggest tables with their gear. on saturday night a pizza got taken to the wrong table and they ate half of it before we realized it and that’s always a bummer to the table that has to wait for their pie to get re-made, a bummer to me, and a bummer to the poor guy who made the mistake. but we got over it and had fun anticipating the stache-off judging.

i’m so glad we’re closed sundays and mondays. i’m going to try and fix my washer tomorrow and maybe even start a new painting.

stache-off FINALE from satchel on Vimeo.

fence/ poop from satchel on Vimeo.

so, i’ll throw another one in for you. i know you don’t have time to watch all this but if it wasn’t quality material i wouldn’t be bothering you with it.
no worries, it’s only one minute. i know you have one minute for me.

wednesday follow-up from satchel on Vimeo.

today’s thursday but i’ve got video video from a couple days ago to show. this has been a busy week for sure. lots to see from tuesday, 3 videos made from wednesday and there will be one from today as well, which i’ll post in a couple days… we’re going to make the parking lot better, help you spot the place when driving up, and make t-shirts easier to browse… oh, that’s just the beginning…

tuesday things from satchel on Vimeo.

i’ve got lots of video from yesterday, when i had a few new projects going on, but haven’t had time yet to put it together, so while i work on that i’ll post a short clip from last friday night when we were slammed. the tickets were coming on so fast that i was wondering how there were that many people in gainesville, and wondering if people were maybe coming in from jacksonville… i was thinking how fun it would have been to have a camera rolling all night and then sped up to see the whole thing, but my camera and my editing software could never handle all that… so, you’ll have to settle for this:

slammed from satchel's on Vimeo.

stache-off part 4 from satchel's on Vimeo.

man oh man, do i have a lot in store for you. all the videos i still had on my computer have been re-uploaded in better quality… the parking lot at satchel’s is getting better, believe it or not… the t-shirt display is getting a facelift… the new LSE website is about to get launched and blow yer mind… my mind is getting blown RIGHT NOW just thinking about all the great stuff that you’ll get to see and experience JUST BY FOLLOWING THIS BLOG! it’s all happening. just stay tuned. i’m only one man.

we’re pullulating in the cyberspace department. pullulate is a word i just learned from my thesarus, means to spread rapidly, burst of activity…. anyway, cory is working on the new LSE site, and we’ve got 3 employees working on blogs for the site. blog readers get the first look. mark these blogs and check back. danny’s blog will highlight some people and stories having to do with lightnin’ salvage from his vantage point. john’s blog will highlight the guest and permanent collections in the museum. teresa’s blog will follow the charitable giving, money we give from ATM profits, and the satchgrant program.

i love to watch it pullulate. (my computer underlines this word like it’s not a real word…hmmmm)

mop bucket re-match from satchel raye on Vimeo.

cool old picture of me and my sister, joanne, down by the lake at my grandparents house. my family lives at this house now and looks at the same pond every day. i should pose my kids in the same spot…

well, i got good news and bad news. the good news is that i made a really short video that i had enough space to upload and i will be posting it here later tonight. it’s a rematch against that old mop bucket, and i think i might win this time. and the bad news is that at&t posted the wrong number for us in the new phonebook… they posted our ATM number, so not only has take-out business been down, but the ATM frequently doesn’t give people money because, well, someone is dialing in and listening to never ending ringing, which is what an ATM sounds like when you dial it up, never ending rings… so our customers get frustrated that they aren’t getting money to pay the bill, and the person wanting to pick up a pie thinks we’re either too slammed to answer or closed or just not answering the phone… it’s a lose – lose situation. hopefully tomorrow i can get the posted number to call the restaurant but somehow i think at&t will not decide to give me the hundreds or thousands of dollars i have lost over this. they never called us to confirm our phone number. anyway, at least i was able to re-match that mop bucket.

i’ll keep you posted. stache-off, part 4 will be up next tuesday, and more videos coming next week. january 30th is the stache-off judging so don’t go anywhere….

once i was a little kid…

well, since i went back and started re-uploading all my old videos in this better format, i quickly reached my limit of space on my vimeo account. i can upgrade by laying out some money to vimeo, but the truth is, i doubt i would normally ever reach my weekly limit under normal circumstances, so why pay 60 bucks just to keep posting videos this week?
instead i think i will take a week long break from posting videos, maybe i will make some videos and just hold them until i can post again, which is a week from today. guess i should bust out the camera and post some photos this week. anyway, i’m just glad that i figured out how to do this. seeing them now makes me all the more excited about the possibilities. with some practice, i think i can make some fine short films…

sooo, i was all in a fit about how bad my videos looked. dean was saying he could hardly watch the thursday crew one. i was talking to danny about getting an HD camera, upgrading my vimeo account…. i was researching cameras and trying to figure out why my videos looked so pixelated… and then my moment: i found some compression guidelines on vimeo, checked my compression settings on my computer, and there was the big problem. i had been doing it wrong all along. i am not computer savvy, not even close. it’s taken me 3 years to get comments and i didn’t even figure it out, brent did. this was just a fluke really, that i read some guidelines… i never read that stuff. i was so close to going out tonight and getting a new camera thinking that would solve my problems. now i think this flip video will be fine…

i am now going back and re-posting all the old videos in better quality. anyone who cares can scroll down and actually SEE the faces of the thursday crew. dean, i want feedback!

also, today i was thinking so much about my new camera that i couldn’t get jazzed about filming, so i only got this one minute of stuff

rubber ducky from satchel raye on Vimeo.

this post is to test the comments. anyone out there reading this should help me out by trying to comment. you can just say stuff like: “this blog is boring. don’t quit your day job.” or “your videos are too pixelated. get a better camera.” or “satch, you are cool.” anything so i can see if the comments are working. kina, this means you. speaking of the video quality, i was considering getting an HD camera and upgrading my vimeo account and then the videos would look sharp, but i am perplexed because i don’t know if i am at the end of this video making fad i have been in, in the middle, or at the beginning. i am excited to get back into my studio to paint and now that the weather could be turning better, i know my evenings may take me to the studio, (which is a screen room which is why the weather matters.) there is always the possibility that i could paint AND make videos, but currently i am not feeling like i can sustain the videos so much. they are exhausting in some ways. i like making them, but like any hobby they take a lot of time.

turns out that if this comment thing works, i won’t switch my blog over to tumblr like i was thinking. brent helped me by fixing it, at least i think, and you may have noticed that we’re also tweaking the look of the blog as i was wanting to simplify.

i would take this opportunity to tell you how much i love my thesarus, how i looked up craze and found the word fad which i liked better than craze, i would tell you how i had to put off my trip to the beach this weekend because i had to meet a plumber monday morning about a leak under the sink at satchel’s, and i would tell you that there is a new toilet in LSE, but i need to do some other stuff, so i might tell you that stuff another time.

satch

P.S. FYI: i stopped putting all the posts in categories like home life, work life, etc, so nowadays all the posts are just “uncategorized.” i also never add tags. this stuff seems like fluffy extra stuff and i just don’t have the patience for it. nobody cares. i know this so i ignore those things. i should admit, i really like the new white look, the simple header, the absence of the byline. thank you brent. awesome.

looks like everybody’s trying to get it on the ‘stache contest…. danny’s got his own blog about to go on the site. i’ll post a link here soon.

2 weeks ago i started the process of getting a new toilet in LSE. the one we have has a list of problems. i called my plumber and set it up, told him to get us an industrial one. i guess he just kept putting it off. then last night, we finally get a crazy busy day, the busiest we’ve been in months, and the toilet gets clogged and there’s a line of ladies 5 deep waiting for the satchel’s ladies room. we’ve got LSE full with people waiting an hour and no toilet because the plumber dropped the ball. so, i’m up early and heading to lowe’s. sometimes i guess i just have to do it myself. plumber by day, pizza maker by night. don’t worry, i’ll be sure to wash up good in between.

while i was trying to solve the problem of our breaking spray bottle triggers, john was displaying the new guest collection or corn.

spray bottle holders and corn collection from satchel raye on Vimeo.

thursday crew comes in every thursday and it’s customers like these that make my day. music by woodsboss.

thursday crew do-over from satchel raye on Vimeo.

and this image we chose for making a new postcard. again this one by chris swain. swain got 3 picks of the 4 so cheers to him.

i had planned to be filming the men of the double envelope last thursday for the blog. they come in every thursday and are always pleasant and friendly. but the truth is i forgot and that was the day danny and i went out giving away pizzas to cars with satchel’s bumper stickers. i am hoping that i will remember this thursday to get them on film.

if this cold weather keeps up, i’m moving to florida.

it’s 12:04am. i left work at 9:30 tonight. since i got home i have been writing the tighten up newsletter. the tighten up is a monthly newsletter for employees of all the things they need to know to make our restaurant run better. this one is 4 pages. we need to tighten up the schedule, learn more about the ATM, there is new gift card procedure, and i want everyone pre-bussing tables a lot more. these are just a few of the points, but sometimes i wonder when i leave at 9:30 if they think i just come home and hang out. i usually work most of the time even when i’m not in the restaurant and sometimes it just wears me out. i’m desperately trying to get all my ducks in a row tonight so i can enjoy having 2 days off. monday i turn 42, and i don’t want to work monday for sure. i like work, it’s not that, it’s just that i like not working too. i love having whole days off. who doesn’t?

the photo above is the one we chose for 1st place of the pictures the students at sante fe took for the class project. there were lots of good photos and we’re giving out a few prizes for the ones we liked best.

so i had already worked on the tighten up news yesterday for a couple hours and i worked on it tonight for 2 more hours and then remembered that we’ve collected a bunch of emails for our customer newsletter. i’m not sure why we have a customer newsletter too, but i went ahead and sent out a quick note for that newsletter as well. i guess there are times when it’s good to have a couple hundred email addresses to promote events or whatever, but mostly i think the customers should just read the blog every day. ha.

here’s the second place photo, incidentally, taken by the same person:

it’s 12:18. i should go to bed. i am tired you know. but it’s like i am emptying out my brain here so i can sleep good.

thanks to Kina, for the mention now twice in her blog. i only have a handful of sites i check daily and hers is one. she runs a pizza shop in oregon and so we are leading parallel lives, or so it seems at times. we have similar philosophies about work and employees. she’s got a great blog worth following if you’ve got the time.

and in third place:

it’s 12:24. good night. thanks for checking in. come see us. dress warmly.
love, satch

ok. i spend way too much time trying to make content for this here blog. there’s about 10 of you out there following it and i’m personal friends with 8 of you and could just tell you i’m tired of my mop buckets instead of making movies about it. i know, the videos are just too long. my goal was to make 2 minute videos so you could make it through them. then why do i continue to make 4 and 5 minute videos? i still don’t know. i guess i am afraid to edit all the important stuff out. anyway, i’m going to stop. i’m surely going to have to give up this silly recent obsession with making videos for the blog. i’m sure i have better things to do. who has the time to follow all this junk? who cares that danny and i are out throwing eggs at a car with a domino’s sticker? my wife loves to make jokes that i call making these videos “work.” i don’t know. some days i think i should just go to bed early for a change instead of sitting here and waiting for stuff to upload and download and sideload and all that. anyway, here’s a struggle i had today, with a mop bucket:

satch vs mop bucket from satchel raye on Vimeo.