one of my best friends is getting married in China in April. i want to see him get married so bad but i am having trouble making the commitment to go to his wedding. it’s weird to be unsure of an action. i usually have no problem making decisions quickly.

the other day i was at Satchel’s and we were closed and at one point the morning light was flooding in through the red stained glass window and it was putting this crazy glow on one of my painting on the wall with a red frame. i snapped this but felt like it would be hard to photograph how intense the light was.

a couple booths down the light was playing a different trick on a collage:

Speaking of collage, Feral is a local artist who did a collage on a door in Lightnin’ Salvage. if you’ve ever been there you know the door i mean… it’s covered in tiny beads and pieces and is adored by the customers. well, she and Ryan are seen here working on a new mosaic out by the swing set. this is a really great treat when you go to the back of the playground… some birds, a river, a town….

i had an awesome time at the medieval faire. when i asked my daughter which was better, Disney World or the Medieval Faire, she hesitated… and never was sure…
my son has saved all year for the shops there. he saved $107 but only brought $55. came home loaded with treasures.

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!

so maybe i can’t embed videos here yet but i can still show you a picture no one else has seen. we got that new mixer and it inspired us to paint our old one red.

in other news……… its busy. real busy. the holidays is one of our biggest times of the year because folks want to bring their friends and family in for a pie. tuesday night before christmas (last night) was one of the hardest nights we’ve had in years. everything was going wrong. there were tickets not printing, mistakes by front of house and back of house (FOH & BOH)… it was just far from fun. tonight was a bit better but still the devices (ipods) were giving us trouble. somehow and thankfully, danny’s iPAD was cranking out LSE orders. but all of these computer problems and also the employees frustration with the devices, has me ready to make a bold move in a new direction.
more on that later.

look at this amazing shot sent in by a faithful customer:

wow.

so, while WORK for me is really hard this time of year and my mind is firing on cylinders i didn’t know i had…. there is an alternate universe where the happy customer is enjoying a pie to the fullest, thinking about us while in Paris, and taking this photo and sending it to us. this is the small pleasure that takes me away from the work and stress and kinked shoulder…. and delivers me to the place where i remember why i love this business. people care. pizza eating folks come in and are excited about it and get good food and drop their hard earned cash…happily….

i’m the same way- i super LOVE the places i love: caribbean spice, hogan’s heros, lowe’s, my wife’s cooking, my mom’s cooking, and some big time satchel’s. i STILL eat that pie and just find myself slowing down and getting into it, and my mind blowing a little bit.

are there any other photos i should show you?

the pinecone contest judging was today. i am sorry to report that i was too busy to get the “inside the judging” video that i got last year. the available time for me to christmas shop has come down to the wire, what with me working an 80 hour week between my work at home and at the shop, so i was at target when i should have been filming…. i tried again to embed the pinecone contest judging from last year and had NO LUCK. i’m not even gonna try and link because that doesn’t work either….

but—-you can go to our homepage at satchelspizza.com, and click the satchel’s pizza vimeo link on the right side of the screen, and look for the video called pinecone judging 2010, and re-live the dream…. but 2011? did john break out the flip video? i wonder…. but i doubt it.

FYI: the pinecone contest awards ceremony for 2011 will be held january 7, 2012, at LSE, at 7pm. that’s right, while we USUALLY have the awards ceremony n the SAME YEAR as the contest, this year we switched up and are having our awards ceremony the first saturday in january. why? because the holidays are so busy with so many events that it’s not only hard to organize and prepare for the awards, but people are often out of town that may be collecting said award, so we are “trying out” this alternate date and ceremony. please bust out your day-timer and notate that 1-7-12 @ 7pm, is the 2011 pinecone contest awards ceremony at LSE. always fun and interesting.

and finally, and exclusively for the blog readers…. i have no idea how many of you are out there but i’m guessing about 30 from views i get after i “used” to post videos…. a great shot of jeff, the guy who basically invented and created the “garden” that is in front of satchel’s. he was the farmer i got to plant and help organize the space that is now the wonderful lush garden that sits right on 23rd ave. he got married recently and this is a shot from the party after his wedding. wow. it was such a great wedding and they are so awesome together….

i got excited about the blog because i had a busy week and a lot to report. i made some videos to share here and wrote one of my longer posts about a host of things going on. but while in the past i could embed videos without problems, now my wordpress account won’t seem to embed my videos. since i want to share them i will head to facebook although my preferred method for release would be here. with the holidays and my schedule, it could be weeks before i’ve figured out a solution and my videos would no longer feel relevant. please check the satchel’s pizza facebook page for the videos in the coming hours/ days.

so, for the online version of my show i present 4 new stained glass windows (4 more not yet photographed but i will get them tomorrow….) 1 of 2 murals i painted at the beach this year, and 1 of 3 new bumper sticker designs…. the one pictured is ready for public release tomorrow…(free with purchase)

thanks for paying attention. it means a lot. i’m not sure why i must make all this art but i know that there is a reason beyond my understanding.

today i hung 8 new paintings at work and then came home and found a ninth one i had forgotten about. lennie kesl has paintings and collage on the other wall so it’s a show worth seeing i think.

photographed above are 4 new stained glass windows i just finished last night. these are in my studio.

found a satchel’s video HERE

i like it. hope there are more to follow….

i’m thinking about making these bumper stickers soon…. the photo is 3 different styles lined up.

….i have a lot of fun projects going at once…. and the weather is mild, but it gets dark so early now…

i’ll be hanging 8 new 2011 paintings and collages soon at work. i think there are 4 paintings and 4 collages… and i painted 2 murals this summer too… i should print photos of those for the show i guess….

blogging is low on the priority list, sorry, but at least there is that preview of the future bumper stickers….

john might never mention it, but he is sculpting the ‘garden of crete” out on 23rd ave NE.
some things just keep getting better in g’ville….

took my kids out for dinner and enjoyed some live music and a calzone. it was like i was a customer for the third time or something…. but better because everything was free…ha

i am excited about tomorrow. so much to do.

so, someone left a 5 gallon bucket on the outskirts of our property last week. i saw the bucket and thought, “what is that bucket there for?” but decided to wait until later to see if anyone claimed it. well, a few days later an employee saw it and said “what the hell is the bucket doing here?” and opened it. inside?? shrimp heads…. which had then been sitting in the sun for a week. needless to say he almost threw up. but- then is when things went oh so wrong…. employee decided to bag and throw out the bucket but never got the top sealed on the bucket…. then didn’t tie the bag good either… then threw it into an empty dumpster where the bag split open because, well, it’s a 5 gallon bucket inside a plastic bag getting tossed up and into an empty dumpster with no “cushion” of other bags… and then???? then you have shrimp juice all over the dumpster and spilling out inside and it’s a friday lunch…. that’s when i get the phone call.

“the dumpster gets emptied about this time on fridays… is the dumpster empty or full?” i ask… “let me check…. oh crap it’s empty.” “OK. get in the dumpster, get the bag out, get the remainder of the contents into a SEALED bucket (we have some on site. ) get the thing into a couple bags, and have a bleach-fest at the dumpster. ” “uh—- really?” ” YES!”

needless to say the ordeal was a 2 hour nightmare in the middle of a friday lunch rush and the wave of rotten seafood small was flooding a 2 block radius so that anyone smelling it was about to vomit…

wow.

how did this happen? is someone trying to sabotage us?

…never a dull moment in this business i tell you… never a dull moment…

so i don’t really understand why more people don’t get on our contests… i guess i need to advertise the contests better. we have a photo contest, a video contest, a pinecone contest and build a cardboard van contest. so far, i have been so underwhelmed by the entries of our build a van contest that i have given away free pizza to everyone who has sent us a photo or brought in a van made from the kit on our large pizza box ( about 7 people.)
but ZERO people have entered the video contest. and only a few the others… i need a poster. having a website link is not enough i guess.
this girl pictured, she placed in our pinecone contest either last year or the year before and now she’s back. why? because winning is fun, especially at lightnin’ salvage/ satchel’s. the prizes are amazing.

i saw this in a warehouse the other day… i don’t know anything about it as we were looking at the warehouse as a place for one of my employees to rent to open his own bakery and this was the current tenants project. i thought it was pretty cool though. hope i’m not leaking any major secrets here, ha.

we have vaulted the ceiling in our kitchen. soon we’ll have skylights and solar attic fans taking out the heat. i’ll post better photos once the project is complete. vaulted ceilings and skylights in the kitchen, how nice is that?

sorry. my bad. the table did not walk out on the large tab but our staff made a mistake. i am actually so relieved to know that it was our fault and not a dishonest customer.
we have a new computer system and the large parties are expected to pay with added gratuity. some employee took the money, put it in the register, and forgot they had done this. also, they never “cashed out” the bill on the computer. so, 15 minutes after the party left we noticed they were not cashed out and we asked the employees if anyone had taken the money and they were all 100% certain they had not. i was bummed. my GM says, “just wait until tomorrow before you get bent out of shape… see if the money works out..” did i do that? no. i was depressed. bummed. how could they get away with this?
then the next day? we were $1.86 short. and this after we had “cashed out” the order as if they had paid. so they did pay. someone put it in the register and just forgot to close out the table. anyway, it’s our bad. i jumped the gun. i shouldn’t have worried about it before i knew. i feel bad.

we have had tables leave without paying. not many. in 8 years maybe a dozen tables. usually 2 tops that sit outside and slip off. a few times i think people just forgot, maybe because you have to go to the register and pay at our place…. anyway, i’m sorry. it was our fault. no one skipped on the bill. i forgot that i had even blogged this until i saw the comment today.

we’ve been slow. september is slow for restaurants in general i think. but i’ve got a thousand projects i’m working on and i’m working 10-14 hour days lately. not every day, but a few days a week. i’ve got so many fun projects planned for the place. wish i could tell you all about them but maybe not a good idea…. always better to come in and look for new stuff…

cheers. gotta run….

it seems a table walked out tonight on $179 tab. mistake on their part? our part? intentional? we don’t yet know.

we are about to have a championship bocce match. this is one of the losing teams who may be a winning team too. how? well, danny invented the “most flair” award to the team who has the most flair, duh. this team is in the running for the award. what is the award? oh- you will see dear people. i will post a picture here. blog readers will know what others do not know and will never know. blog readers gets good photos and the most insidest scoop.

i know you have not seen a picture as cute as this which is why am sharing it. not only that but my blood and genes run through one of these angels. kids are cuter than even kittens.

see? what did i tell you. kids can sleigh you. all i have to do is throw in a couple cute kid pics and you are riveted.

in other news at work we had the best 3rd week of august ever and one of the slowest days in 4 years… business is booming and business is slow. it’s a roller coaster and we are trying to figure it out. too many people on the clock. send one home and then we get slammed and not enough… wow. let me tell you for the first time in my life i am typing this and not looking at the keyboard. i am looking at the screen and typing and the words are coming out right… wow. this is so cool. i have now learned where the keys are by hunt and peck and i feel as though i’ve just learned a new language. i am typing and only looking down every tenth word…. i am in the 4th dimension now;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

love you all.

machine precision, one of the contenders in our current bocce championship.

sorry if you watched that video of a bridge and hated it. it’s probably a personal story more than one to share. eddie is one of my very best and oldest friends in the world, and i was lucky enough to hang with him for a week this year before he left for nepal, where he wants to explore around for the next 500 days… his music always speaks to me which is what i wanted to share more than the visual. the visual was me trying to hold a flip video while driving at 70 across a bridge so it’s bound to be shaky…. but we were so amazed at the bridge, the nuclear plant, the huge crane and the port, and i was so glad to hear eddie’s music, that i decided to try and record the scene. i thought i could at least maybe pull the music from the scene for listening to later. but eddie has now sent me loads more music he made on thumb drive so i didn’t need this bit of film. my phone rang while we were driving and i scrambled to shut it off.

amazing that a photo exists of me doing yoga. not only that, but eddie, my daughter and me doing yoga on the beach. i will admit i have been to 3 bikram yoga classes in the last month.

hats, visors, and coffee cups coming …. soon?
hats: mesh back with satchel’s pizza logo in orange red and white.
visors: i won’t even try and describe the visor, i am afraid i will spoil it. lets just say i am wishing for the world’s best visor so we can all “bring back the visor.” just think: you’ll be one of those people saying, “i was wearing a visor before visors were so cool.”
coffee mugs: ” i eat my pizza in a van.”

if i told you any more secrets the enquirer would be calling me so let’s leave it there.

i took my good friend Eddie to the airport recently and we listened to some music he made while driving. here is a quick shot of me driving, while making a video of a visual to his music. watch it.