this is my new desktop photo. i live on a pond and the current drought has the lake dried up. most of it is drying up mud. it is sort of beautiful to see how it dries….

there are some turtles left, and a gator. i wonder about the turtle that wanders through the mud and then get stuck. turtles don’t get stuck in the mud, right? i was asking my wife and she answered so plainly, “It’s a turtle!” which told me obviously i was an idiot and that turtles probably have no issues with mud.

sometimes i feel stuck in the mud and i am not a turtle. but i do love a good speech. a good speech is nice to listen to, even if it all seems so impossible. i enjoy watching the state of the union address when i am aware it’s happening and i can make an hour to listen. It’s hard not to admit that Obama is an inspiring speaker.

we went canoeing a couple weekends ago. the weather is so gorgeous that the springs actually feel warm. it’s weird. the air was just a bit cooler than the 72 degrees spring so while the sun was beating and it felt awesome at 70, the water felt even better. but i’d like to share this picture of the canoe my wife made about 11 years ago. so sweet. we call her “Tippy” though she hasn’t tipped yet.

here’s a couple iphone photos of the bison my son and i encountered today on our walk in the prairie.
it is a BIG animal i tell you… the first one i ever saw was with C only about a week ago near the same spot! My daughter and i went walking a loooong way last week and never saw one. but today i saw my second and my son his first. he was more excited about the HAWK than the bison. the hawk was perched on a post across the ditch and we passed her easily walking out and she was still there when we returned by. it was a fun day. the wife and daughter went to a B-day party and S and I played Hive Carbon and rode our bikes into town and ate some good slices from Big Lou’s and went to Mochi. then rode back and saw the bison and hawk on a walk.

the restaurant was a controlled chaos and i lost my mind when a pie was sent to the wrong table… can you understand the fury here? some table has gotten a pie WITHOUT the onions they ordered…. another table is getting a pie that has onions and they didn’t order onions… both pies have artichoke hearts, steak, sun dried tomatoes…. anyway- this sort of mistake means we are now ADDING sun dried tomatoes to try and “sort-of-fix” the pie that now has to go out, we are making a couple of slices without onions for the guy who doesn’t want onions… we are sending desserts to the folks who got the wrong pie, ordered onions and didn’t get them, we are in a frantic mess in the kitchen making haste to fix everything and get back on track, and all the while pies are done, coming out, needing to find the right table, and new orders are streaming in… it gets quite out of whack at times.

on the brighter side, the other 99% of the pies that came out were awesome and amazing and mind blowing works of art… maybe we made 200 pies tonight and 3 of them were UNperfect. there was the cheese deep dish. that’s a hard pie to get right no matter what. the deep with 3 or 4 toppings is a dream come true. the deep with just cheese is a pizza maker challenge. tonight it turned out soggy, sloopy, wet, and not so good. the crust chosen for the job was undercooked to start with. it then had too much sauce and too much cheese for what it was. so it comes out soggy, gets cut. the decision is made to put it back in the pan and back in the oven ( i was not there at that moment..) and i see it coming out the second time. still soggy, sloopy, sauce and cheese pooled in the middle….. this is a great tasting ugly pie.. and not really right.. more like lasagna than pizza.
i had no choice but to comp the pie and apologize. i explained to the pizza maker how i thought it should be made. and i have to go on. 99% is damn good. i hope i made it up to the 1%.

i love Sundays. i really love Sundays. i love a busy Friday night and i worry all day about Saturdays, but i love me a Sunday.

i”m excited for my friends Dean and Teresa, who against all odds, opened their own awesome bakery, the Vine. as much as i love their bread, the pasta makes me swoon like i thought only a calzone could. we are going to try and figure out a way to get our Satchel’s customers picking up fresh bread and pasta when they are in for pizza. if you’ve never tried it you should make a special point to visit the Wednesday’s farmers market downtown and pick up some ravioli and a baguette. you will be blown away by the dinner you create that night. you could dump Ragu on that pasta and rip the bread and chew it alongside dry and you’re eyes would be rolling back in your head. but with some butter and a bit of creative sauce? Lord, you will think you died and went to Heaven.

Would i lie? do you think i am getting paid to advertise? please.

anyway- LSE is going through some changes. a new bar is coming. bigger, better, you can’t even imagine how better it can get. i find myself giddy about it. plotting and thinking and straining my brain. lots of good news coming in 2012… lots of good news…..

tonight was out 6th annual pinecone contest awards ceremony. i made a video and it ended up being 10 minutes long. this is too long i realize however – it is for the hardcore fans. if i condensed it to 2 minutes, i would get a few more people to watch it but one would not get the grand understanding of the event. the LSE curator and resident artist, john orth, is the pinecone contest official. he preps me every year behind the scenes. he writes the notes which help me MC the event. he makes the trophies and the display, and he prints and frames the awards. this contest could not happen without his extreme efforts. anyway, i want to show some of the behind the scenes prep for an event this big. and with 4 award winners and some context, 10 minutes is the bare minimum this sort of documentary could be. like i said, it’s for hardcore lightnin’ salvage fans. i know you’re out there.

while i have a friend looking into updating my stuff to allow videos to be posted here, the answer from on high has not been yet handed down. and in an unfortunate (or fortunate) twist, i am forced to release this new short film on facebook rather than my preferred release on the blog, because for some reason i ended up with a wordpress.org blog that to this day still often times causes me to wonder…. while you may think technology just happens while you sleep the reality is that i still cannot show a video on my blog in 2012, and although i have experts working on it, they are still waiting for answers and updates from others in the huge expanse of cyberspace. while none of this may make sense to you never fear because none of it makes sense to me either.

so, in order to see the latest video of the 2011 pinecone awards ceremony, please see the satchel’s pizza facebook page, or the satchel’s pizza vimeo channel.

sorry. thanks. i luv u. pinecones and pizza ya’ll.and PEACE!