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.

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…..

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!

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.

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.

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….

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.

“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…

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….

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.

here’s a mural i painted on a house at the beach.

my nephew and niece are visiting from colorado. my kids love no one more.

my mother bought the kids surf lessons one day.

my friend aloe took this photo in our backyard.

so, i bought a raft a week ago. we call it punchy. because some friends had a similar raft when they were young and it had a hawaiian punch advertisement on it and they figured it was something you could get if you turned in enough hawaiian punch labels and some cash. it’s a canvas raft that’s blue on one side and red on the other. you might remember having one when you were a kid.

so, when we were out late one night and found a beach shop still open late, we ended up buying a punchy raft for $15 and said friend got a sharpy marker and made me write the date on the raft when i bought it to see how long it would last. i thought it would last a long time, others were saying it would be popped in no time.

punchy’s a week old today and has been patched 3 times already.

so while i was complaining that you just can’t find a decent made raft anymore, and they always get holes in them and seem hardly worth fixing… and while i was trying to think about how i could start a factory that was able to produce high quality beach products… and fretting about how hard it would be to start a factory that could make beach chairs that would last and rafts that were decent and umbrellas that would last forever…

while i was stewing over all of these thoughts, i actually discovered what seems to be a way to patch a canvas raft. i had to try 3 times to patch the first hole and 3 patches then followed for subsequent holes and finally i think punchy is patched… for now… and i decided that if i am ever at the beach, maybe i could just hang out a sign that says, “SATCH’S RAFT PATCH” and for 5 bucks i could patch your raft ( maybe expensive but what do you have to lose?) and instead of trying to start a factory i could just repair rafts which would be practically as good as creating the new awesome beach stuff company.

and then i figured that i could also hang a sign for “SATCH’S CHAIR REPAIR” and “SATCH’S FIX-U-BRELLA.”

so, if you want to get high quality beach stuff that will last the season, just buy some cheap ole whatever and when it breaks or pops, look for my stand. it will have 3 signs and a few simple tools.

what a busy week it’s been. real busy. maybe because school is out and the locals are out as well. while most gainesville businesses worry about how to survive the summer without college students, we seem to manage pretty well. thanks to all the locals who are coming out.

i’m going to take some days off and hang with the family. i’m always nervous about not being at work all the time, but i’m also planning to design a new bumper sticker, some hats and mugs and maybe a t-shirt on my “vacation” and maybe re-write the employee training manual. does that count as taking time off?

i saw this van at albertson’s recently. i had to snap a picture. it’s not often you see a van that is so packed with crap there is barely room for a driver….

we’ve got our new POS system in full swing now. it has it’s benefits and pitfalls but mostly it’s good. i mean, all the tickets come straight to the kitchen from the table and we can read them without calling the server back and asking is that a bacon or broccoli? things are better at the register, quicker and smoother. danny taking orders in LSE keeps 30 people from coming into the dining room TWICE…. once to order and once to pick up. now we run it to them back there and they never have to come up. the long lines that we used to have seem to be happening much less….so all that is good. i guess the main complaint i have is that it takes longer to take an order now than it used to…. we really need an app that is more customized for us to improve the order taking experience… that’s something i am hoping can happen in the future… something i am looking into…

it was a slow weekend… steady but not as busy as usual. life has finally almost returned to normal for me this week, after months of long days and nights and short visits with the kids.
right now my house is filled with the smell of boiled peanuts. i’m getting them ready for tomorrow. tomorrow is a trip with the family to itchetucknee, to the great outdoors cafe, and to pick blueberries in alachua. after that to my mom’s house for dinner which is always the highlight of my week as my mom spends all day preparing the best meals and desserts imaginable. for those of you who may not know this about me, itchetucknee is my favorite place on the planet. c and i used to go every week before we had kids. we’d just get a whim and go…. drive the van out there, doors propped up on a tree at home, boiled peanut shells flying out the doors like a trail, and a bubba keg of sweet tea to balance the salty peanuts…. tomorrow we re-live that but now with kids… they love the peanuts…. the van is retired but the camo truck will do. i’ve got the sweet tea ready and the peanuts are smelling oh so good right now…

people never stop asking me to open another place. they ask like i could just snap my fingers and there it would be – cranking out killer crispy pies day and night. tonight a customer said his sister lives in indiana and when he texted her where he was she instructed him to kidnap me and take me up there to open a pizza place. last week i got an email from a couple in austin texas asking me to please come to austin and open a pizza place. every year i get an email from someone in high springs asking me to come consider high springs for a new place. in lowe’s on wednesday the paint counter lady asked me to open a place on the westside of town…. but you know? it’s having 2 full days off that keeps me going as it is. and if i am working around the clock in the one place after 8 years, then where is the time to open the new place? don’t the kids need a papa? my 6 year old girl has me wrapped so tightly around every finger and toe… when we are in the pool she says, “throw me up and catch me!!” and i do. “throw me up higher and catch me!” she yells again. and i do. “throw me into space and catch me!” this game never gets old. never.

i came home early tonight, what with the rapture expected and all that. no, we were much slower than usual so i’ll use the extra hour to blog tonight about nothing and boil peanuts and finish my latest painting.
i looked at an article trying to figure out how this old man had decided today was the rapture and it explained about these 3 magical, special, biblical numbers and how when multiplied together they give a number that when added to the calendar starting at christ’s crucifixion, add up to today. wow. like this wingnut could actually calculate the actual day of the crucifixion even…. and it amazes me that i heard so many people talking about this. of course, people love to think about the end of the world and the rapture. it’s intriguing for sure but no person will ever predict an event like this. i don’t doubt that a rapture may one day happen but i can be certain that no human will predict it.

and in an effort to alienate a portion of people out there i should mention that obama is a bad-ass. i happened to hear some of his middle east speech while driving a couple days ago and was impressed. i only wish that words could be transformed into actions and that middle east peace was actually tangible. gotta go stir the peanuts. kina, i bet you’ve never even had boiled peanuts because you aren’t a southerner at all. you don’t know what you’re missing. boiled peanuts and itchetucknee are the definition of heaven to me so it IS like the rapture for me.

now, often people want to “reserve” our back lounge area for a party but we don’t reserve that either but try and explain to them the times when it would be likely empty and they could use it. if we have a long wait for a table we need that area to entertain the guests that are waiting. we provide live music and people get a drink and watch a band and the wait goes by quickly….

however, all of that being said, we also cannot tell people not to come. we explain the situation and try and steer them in the right direction. that’s all we can do, our restaurant is first come first served…. so, we’ve had parties that took up the lounge for the whole night instead of 4 or 5 different groups coming through and using the space to wait and we’re not about to kick people out, we’re in business so people can have fun…but in the back of my mind i know that when one table sits for 3 or 4 hours, it means 3 or 4 groups have to wait longer for a seat……. it’s part of the challenge of being a busy place. “it’s a good problem to have” is what i hear when i try and explain to anyone some of the tricky situations we find ourselves in….

now we have a large group that is going to bring their wedding party in on a saturday night and enjoy the lounge. their party will likely take up the whole lounge for some duration and since they are arriving early enough to physically occupy the space it is theirs to enjoy. on the same night, at the same time, there is another equally large wedding party that is coming but want to sit “inside” for the A/C… hmmm.

so, let me explain… it’s a saturday night, a large group has gathered in our waiting area to party and eat pizza. an equally large group is gathering at the host station looking to get sat in the dining room and the host will likely be spending 30 minutes to an hour trying to get them all sat as tables become available… and if they need to wait for a table, they can go to the lounge area where…. there is another huge wedding party…. and then there are the regular crowd that come on a saturday night… they will see a long waiting list and go back to the lounge area to wait and see a huge party and possibly parts of another huge party all looking for somewhere to wait….maybe 85 people between the two parties…. but between the 2 areas we can seat 140 so it’s not impossible…..