looks like we just crossed the 100,000 visitors on the website. that is great news. but not as great as the gators… i woke up and said to my wife, “wasn’t that a great game?” seems like all i did today was think back on that game…

on a side note, here’s a couple photos of paintings by my favorite painter, morandi, who has his first show in america right now at the met in new york…

i could look at these all day… check out more here

you lucky blog readers, you get a sneak peek at the new satchel’s SEC commemorative t-shirt to come out soon. this is a rough sketch of course but you can see how cool it is.

i tell you, i was excited. i had a few friends over and we were pumped. we kept saying over and over, “this is the biggest game EVER!… and it’s happening RIGHT NOW!”
we must have high fived and said that 20 times. the amazing thing about that game was the momentum pendulum. i mean in that third quarter i thought there was no way we could beat that team. they were marching and moving like mad. there guys seemed 100 pounds heavier each and there were at least 2 if not 3 times in the game when they had all the momentum and looked unbeatable. and then the same could be said for the gators. i don’t have to tell you this, you saw the game but man, wasn’t it incredible?
i actually have lost my voice somewhat from screaming.
the restaurant was dead, like we probably should have been closed it was so dead. but we were open and i went in after the game to see if we would get a pop but we didn’t. but i then came home and started drawing away. why i didn’t know to draw this last week or last month i’ll never understand because i knew that we were going to win this thing…

anyway, i had this one bumper sticker idea but not sure if i will do it or not… FIRST OBAMA, THEN THE GATORS… CELEBRATE AT SATCHEL’S.

my mom has a huuuge dining table and it still wasn’t big enough for this past holiday. she always does a nice job of setting the table. i’m pretty sure i showed pics in previous years of the table. anyway, the food was amazing. i’d list everything we had but you know what the deal is, piles of great food… even in hard times it’s amazing what so many of us have… friends, family and food.

so, tonight is a tuesday. the restaurant was real slow. we stay pretty busy on the weekends but there’s usually not a wait on weekday nights these days. lennie kesl and i have a new show up. 8 new paintings of mine and some really great new works by lennie. i’m pretty excited about the gators and jake worked for me last saturday through the uf/fsu game and has agreed to work this weekend too through the sec title game. i need to make sure to beef up jake’s christmas bonus. if we were going to be real busy i’d go ahead and be there but we are pretty dead during the games.

hope all ya’ll had a good thanksgiving. it’s a good time of year to remember to give to charities, they need it more than ever this year. here’s a snapshot of some of the dishes we had, the sweet potato casserole, rolls and pies are on a different counter…

here’s my prep man, shon, with his new baby shon jr. isn’t this what it’s all about? thanksgiving i mean. we all have parents or kids or friends. some of us even have all 3…. it’s great that there is a holiday which allows us to 1. reflect and be thankful for all we have and 2. eat some really good casseroles and pies.
we’ve been slammed at work. danny came up with the idea to put some plastic up at the back of the lounge and when the heaters are on and he rolls down the tarps and now with the new plastic in the back, well, it’s down right nice back there, even when it’s cold outside. it’s hard to know why we never thought of it before. i guess i’m just not back there enough on cold nights to have figured it out. but now we have this nice warm place for people to wait and listen to music or to have a drink or a to-go pie…. even in cold weather.
i have been very pleased with the reaction to the fountain-o-junk. people stand and stare at it for much longer than they usually stand in front of a museum painting or sculpture. the moving wheels make it mesmerizing. not only that, but people have been commenting to me about how much they like it and i’ve had adults tell me how much their kid likes it. now that makes me really happy, to think that kids are into it and notice it. anyway, i have truly been encouraged by the positive feedback.
i am really excited about this meal coming up tomorrow. my mom has been cooking for days. she is the best cook in the world. last time she made chicken pot pie it was the best chicken pot pie i ever ate, maybe the best single meal i ever had. last time she made an apple pie it was the best apple pie i ever ate, actually the best dessert i ever had. she’s got a new house with a kitchen she designed herself and it seems like the more she cooks in that kitchen the better she gets. this is the first thanksgiving in her new house and she’s got a long table that’s been set since monday. i’ll be sure to get a photo for the blog.
i’m a happy man, maybe the happiest of any man.

well, i am breathing fully again. sigh sigh sigh. what a relief i feel that the election is finally over. i started following it waay too early and waaay too closely. i don’t even feel a need to follow the news currently. i am taking a break. as happy as i am at how this election turned out, i know that the long process of repairs are just beginning. america loves instant gratification and with the mounting problems of our country and world, one man can only do so much so fast. obama has already changed our image around the world. i think that trend will continue. all over the world people now see that we want a different direction and that anyone can become president in this democracy, (anyone but ralph nader that is)… and can obama really deliver some aid to our ills? only time will tell. i, for one, am glad that america is giving the man a chance to live up to his inspiring speech. i believe that the things obama says is a manifestation of the things he honestly believes. but there are those who think he is a socialist, there are some i have talked to who think he will whittle away at our freedoms, and i have heard it said that he will make big government that does not work. i like to hear those opposing points of view because it gives us words to measure progress by. in other words, in 4 or 8 years we can dig up these quotes from hannity or limbaugh, or even our friends, and ask the questions again: “are we less free?” “are we living in a socialist society?” “has our health care system gotten even worse?” and honestly i don’t think it could get worse. i know many would argue with me and say that if there is universal, government run health care it would be worse than it is now and that i guess is to be seen. i, personally, do not believe obama is going to initiate government run health care, and if he did i think it might help a lot of people who have no health care now, but i don’t want to get any deeper into all this… i should probably avoid talking politics because i know it is such a touchy subject. and i’m not here to wax on about obama and my predictions on the future, but i am here to tell you about the next place you need to go for lunch…
east end eatery. located on NE 8th ave, a few blocks east of 9th street. this cozy little lunchery has only been open about a week and i’ve only been once but i love it. the woman who owns the place is a caterer and it is obvious when you walk in. hanging from the ceiling are lots of baskets, cabinets fill the walls and you know that behind the doors are linens and chafing dishes and platters… vases line one shelf, cookbooks fill another wall. the place is packed and clean and cozy. the prices are right and the food i had was perfect. i’m going back for a vegie quesadilla soon. they are open mon – fri 11am -3. i should probably try a few more of the items before i talk them up so much but i really like the feel of the place and the location and i want them to do well.
what else? … oh, the hoodies have arrived so stop by lse and check them out. navy blue. the employees seem to be liking them at least. the fountain is still underway. i’ve ordered lights, the plant guy is bringing plants soon. i’m still tweaking the flow, seems that i’ll be working on that a while. you see, i want the motion of the wheels without the extra overspray of lost water to the system. it’s a very long process, trust me.
pictured above is our beloved tim on halloween. i love these costumes that really bring out the inner being of the wearer.
i’m so happy that florida went for obama. i am so proud of florida.

here’s another great costume from the lovely lauren:

i gotta say it… i hope obama can pull this off. i have never followed politics so closely, read so many blogs, kept up with so much information, all relating to this election. i know it can go either way, i know it can. can this country elect a black man as president? lord i hope we can.

this art is made from 3510 pennies… how bout that for some real change?
art by jim kelly.

just about everyone knows who storm roberts is… well, he writes me the other day to tell me that he loves satchel’s pizza. he had read the blog about the other radio dj’s dissin’ us and had to lift my spirits and give me some compliments. god love him.
shown is a project i just finished… a stained glass window i made for my studio. there will be 4 panels side by side when it’s done, all about this size (about 3′long x 14″ high) and i am hoping that when all together it will make sense as a series. this was the first i’ve messed with glass in about 10 years and back then it was only taking a community ed course. i have forgotten a lot of technical stuff and fortunately you can’t see how bad my solder lines are, but i think by the time i’m done i’ll be better at it. anyway, i’m excited about this new hobby and hoping i do improve.

the pies are still cranking and on the money. it’s still “never a dull moment” kind of thing going on daily up there. i’m working a lot this week and most of the work isn’t even in house. soon we’ll unveil our grant program. i’ll give you details on that right here on the blog very soon. stay tuned…

i wake up starving on saturdays and sundays after long nights of kitchen stress. i don’t often have the energy to cook more, but then there are times when i’m just to interested in a killer breakfast and know that no restaurant in town will live up to my high breakfast standard. what could be better than this spread right here, bacon, eggs, cheese grits, homemade biscuit and a glass of florida OJ? oh, and there’s the sweetwater coffee too. what could be better? hmmm. i’ll have to get back to you on that one.
the weekend was busy and also the first weekend that our new system actually worked. in the new ticket system in house orders get bumped more than ever before, and call in to-go orders get somewhat shafted. if you want a pie on the weekend, you need to call us 2 hours in advance because we are doing less to-go pies, giving longer times between to-go pies, so we can get food to the folks who have been waiting for a table. if you come in and get a to-go pie, we call it to-go waiting pies (generally folks who will eat out back and watch the band), you’ll wait a bit longer too now, as we are giving even more priority to in house orders. you see, when folks have to wait between one and two hours for a table, they should get their food in 45 minutes or less. once we started seeing in house orders taking an hour or more, i realized that something had to give, and the pizzas going in boxes are the ones that gave. the system actually worked brilliantly this past weekend for the first time, and in house food got to the tables quicker than ever. every day poses new challenges for us and this is the latest hurdle we have sprinted over. it’s good news for all you die hard fans who come in and wait for a table. we’re doing everything we can first and foremost for you people. if you’re at home on the computer or in front of the tube, better think ahead and bear with us, you’ve been up there waiting before, you know it can be a struggle. i’m not gonna lie and tell you that from now on all the food is going to be fast and no one will suffer, i’ll leave that to the politicians. no, i’m telling it like it is. if you get it in a box, it’s going to take longer, sorry.
and now for the what could be worse section of the blog. how bout them gators? because the games often get played on saturday nights, i rarely get to see them. but when the occasional 12:30 game happens, i am on it. so, there i was, excited as could be… and then to have a close game, that’s always more exciting… and then it was down to the last play… and there’s my wife, who NEVER watches football but has decided to watch with me and root for the rebels because, well, she’s a rebel i guess… and then the choke… what could be worse? … like i said before, you can’t win them all.
i tell you what could even be worse than that, how about this $700 billion bailout of wall street… how about this war… how about all the bad news going on…??
but i don;t want to bring you down so i’ll try to leave you on a happy note… scroll back up to that photo and take a gander at my dream breakfast… think about it, those cheese grits are perfect.

this is a picture of me trying to look like a robot.

seriously though, what is going on in america?
all the talk about financial turmoil, in conjunction with the high gas and food prices, and the uneasy feeling people are getting about electing a new president, has tables at satchel’s sitting empty. i mean, we still are making lots of pies, and making some really good crispy ones, but business is falling well below expectations and benchmarks. sure, we’ve had a couple busy weekends, and sure if you come at 7:30 you may still have to wait even on a wednesday night, but we have had some slow times lately and this last weekend was probably the slowest we’ve seen all year. i’m not upset about it, i just thought you should know. we’ve poured our earnings into paying off our property for years, we weren’t gambling it all on more and more and more stuff, we didn’t open 15 satchel’s and stretch our credit out… no, we put principle on the payments every month and decided to get our debt down, and hopefully lots of folks are thinking it’s a good time to lay off spending frenzies. live within your means. don’t borrow more than you can repay. now i’m a financial advisor too? no no, i’m just rambling on for the heck of it. you know if you can afford a satchel’s pizza this week…
the upside of business slowing some is that i get more time off. for over 5 years i have been frantically trying to keep up with the pace, hire people, train people, watch the food and service, stress and freak out every 15 minutes, and with business on a slowing trend, i can stay home, read another chapter to my son, play dolls a little longer with my daughter, and maybe, just maybe, even empty out the dishwasher once in a while. i feel good knowing that the staff is well paid and capable, and the holidays may have us slammed again and i’ll be up there bussing tables and answering the phones and all that again soon enough. the wave has finally crested, and now i can surf for a bit…

i’m excited that gator season is upon us. i’ve just finished the newest bumper sticker that says simply, “please vote.” although i have ideas for 15 or so new t-shirts, i am going to sit back and wait for some of the ones we have to sell. the ones i was telling you about a couple weeks ago are in, “satchel’s by the sea, st. augustine.” i would tell you about the new st. augustine location but i don’t want to spoil the truth fun. we have vegan cheese now and i told my dear readers about it but i don’t think we have any vegan blog readers as it has not taken off yet. today ken and i painted, or stained rather, the LSE lounge floor, an interesting shade of orange. what is the deal with orange anyway? well, if you don’t know, it’s my favorite color. but don’t try to break into my email account and use it because it is not one of the secret questions. the rain barrels are pumping rain water to the greenhouse and 2 beds of plants now. did i tell you that the lounge floor is orange?

i gotta go. i’m probably driving you crazy.

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.

well, thanks to brent i can post pictures again. the problem is, i need to go mow the grass. i just wanted to see if it would work. the boy and me were up at the shop today cementing some junk into the fountain. it threatened to rain and storm the whole time but never did. right when we got there it started to thunder and so we waited and waited and then decided to go ahead and just cement some junk.
the lse myspace page will be ready soon, and as awesome as they may be, don’t you wish we had one of these fountains i downtown gainesville? i’d fund the project if the city would allow it. there’d probably be too much concern about safety and homeless people bathing in it… anyway, this is just one of many public interactive water parks in seattle, not the hottest state in the USA where we need it most.
gotta go mow, more later

went to a wood fired pizza place when we visited seattle called tutta bella. the pies were good. the oven was 650 degrees but the cook said he was trying to get it to 750. he also said the pies took 90 seconds to cook. wow. that would solve our wait problem now wouldn’t it? of course, these “neopolitan style pizzas” are a different thing… they are real thin and crispy with burnt edges. the tomato sauce is sweet. they are good, no doubt, but i can’t say they are what i prefer as the perfect pizza. i think gainesville is getting a wood fired pizza place soon, another one that is. i guess carabba’s has this sort of pizza. i think another one is coming out in the deep northwest. anyway, i would loooove to have an outdoor brick wood fired oven built where i could experiment with all sorts of thin crispy gourmet pizzas… maybe that is the next project i should work on, opening a swanky-crispy-wood fire-outdoor-pizza-garden-type-place in northwest gainesville…..just kidding.

here’s another picture from tutta bella:

i should have taken a picture of the pizza. i’m sorry. i was so hungry that we just gobbled it up.

a busy weekend. pies were looking good.
recently we went to visit my wife’s parents in seattle. my wife took a year’s worth of pictures in a week’s time.
i drank way too much coffee and then was stuck with nothing to do… i’m not very good at being on vacation…

i think by talking about sarah r on my blog a couple times, that now that link will keep her review at the top of the yelp reviews forever. serves me right. honestly though, i know our pies are good.

last time i was in seattle i went to this “3rd wave” coffee shop, as they call them. zoka, a roaster and coffee shop pictured above. they had a daily clover decaf choice, which me and c got since it was late. they had a nice assortment of desserts. c got the shortbread cake and i got the chocolate mousse cookie, which was crunchy like a biscotti almost, but good with coffee. the barista came out while we were sitting and told everyone he was going to brew up some new kenyan coffee for everyone to taste. a few people went to try it and he stood around chatting about the wildflower aroma and just jawing on and on about the coffee. i always enjoy seeing people into what they do, and it didn’t surprise me in a city like seattle, but of course it’s much more surprising in g’ville.

see if this works

people of America, meet Bad-O-Mime. he’s a super hero and a Bad Mime. Brought to you by Satchel’s Pizza, otherwise known as Atchel’ssay Izzapay.

i don’t even take pictures anymore. if i did i would share some. no. i am trying to keep pace with my kids, trying to tackle a hundred small restaurant issues, trying to get a little perspective, trying to plan a reggae show, draw some new t-shirts, and finish some personal projects. the personal projects are as vast as the restaurants projects…

and so i barely get to this site. i am working on changes to the website… and sometimes changes happen overnight but right now my projects are all in mid stream. seems my focus is blurred from sheer enormousness. hard to explain really, but basically i have about 45 slices in my pie.

i’ll probably get back to some bloggin’ and some photos and some commentary before too long, but right now i do not see it on the wax, but still on the wane. kinda like home prices and the economy, at least that’s what the talking heads all tell us. not the band but the news heads.

but i’m better off when i avoid all the news. better off when i spend my time drawing instead of reading articles. writing instead of watching tv. painting instead of sleeping. and forget exercising, who has the time? i’m in a re-balancing act, and my priorities have become family oriented. so, that’s not a bad thing. i shouldn’t beat myself up for not getting a million things done but only 150 thousand…

but that’s only 15% of the whole. maybe i’m getting old. the lady at chik-fil-a the other day asked me if my daughter was my granddaughter… but i like to think i’m just getting warmed up still.

more to come, check back in 2 weeks. i’ll try and at least take a good picture by then.

what a busy week from start to finish. saturday night was one of the most challenging i can remember as a cook. but i learned a few things.
there was a nice party late saturday which i had been so looking forward to but could not get un-stressed enough to enjoy. it was a nice party nonetheless.

i love new years. i am so glad for a few days off. our dough mixer is down at work, so i’ll be working hard again january 1st, trying to figure out how we will make dough and grate cheese on january 2nd. it was christmas eve 2 or 3 years ago when the last dough mixer died. weird.

2007 was a great year, and i think 2008 will be even better. i plan to slow the blog down some to give me time for other projects. not that it takes so long for me to write but it’s a mental energy thing. with menu-backs, and my journal, my paintings and drawings… at some point some things will just have to fall of the list and i fear the blog will be one of the first things to go. we’ll see. i may find room for a monologue now and then. maybe i will write even more often…
happy new year. hope you made some resolutions you can keep.

saturday night:
i can say merry christmas because this is my blog and i celebrate christmas. if i were running for office i might say happy holidays but thankfully i am not running for any office.
there are good nights and bad nights at work. the majority of the nights are really good. tonight was bad. it should have been great because it is christmastime and all, but things just did not go right for me. seeing my kids with santa was enough to make up for all the bad things that happened today. so much so that i won’t even talk about the trials….
i will say that i sent out some good pizzas tonight, and a few that were just pretty good.
i am stoked about having 3 days off in a row, merry christmas to the people.

photo from my kids new digital camera that grandma got him early…

p.s. the evel kneivel shirts are on the shelves… next week holopaw and elephant parade at lse.

i did watch much of the republican debate. i have just spent 2 hours listening to the npr democratic debate. i’m not sure what my problem is in regards to putting myself through such torture. i thought if there was anything both parties agreed upon it was that torture is wrong… i’m sure i’ll have a few things to say but honestly now i’m too tired of mind to talk about it.
i have a tendency toward obsession and have become obsessed with the politics of the presidential campaign. i feel so worn out from listening to all these politicians that i think i may be able to ignore all of the nonsense until 2008 now.
the pizzas are still awesome, even when my mind is muddled with the problems that our country and world face. today i had a lunch special with a slice of sausage, basil, and red onions. and the pizza was good, but it was in a tight race with the salad no doubt.
more later.
out