sailing

people ask me lately, “how ya doin?” and it seems like i keep answering, “better than ever.”
i feel like i am sailing away. i’ve been on a sailboat once, with some friends who lived on that old wooden boat, in alaska. the thing had canvas yellow sails, and i saw a huge whale surface just a few feet from the boat…. and we sailed to a remote hot springs, only accessible by boat. we anchored out a few hundred yards and canoed in to the bay…

anyway, i don’t remember feeling much better than those sacred sailing days… and that’s just about how i feel nowadays… like i am the luckiest man in the world, like i have been given an awesome old wooden canvas driven vessel. the open sea. the big sky. the wonder.

May 16th, 2009 | home life, Uncategorized, very nice, work life | Tags: | 0 Comments

lost in space

so, i got un-logged in from the blog site somehow and have been unable to access it for a week. after about 20 emails to different people, brent was finally able to figure out the problem. my life is complex now. so complex i decided to delete my facebook page. that was just one more thing than i could handle.
the photo is on zaca lake. the charming spot you saw in the last post. i can still visit the place in my mind. such a calm and peaceful place.
we sent out a 20 large pizza order at 5pm last saturday. it was the first order we sent out 10 minutes late. usually i am 15 minutes early but saturday was so busy in house that the take-out order got a bit behind. no one in the restaurant suffered though, as we powered through the in house orders while cooking the 20 pies simultaneously. we never could have done that back with those 2 ovens but with 3 now it’s a whole new ball game. it’s sorta like a whole new stadium actually. the weekends are busy as always but with someone on oven and 3 ovens, it never seems so overwhelming.
today was monday and one of those days i am supposedly off. but i had to go up there and see that a cooler was repaired and the pepsi machine repaired. it’s been having trouble keeping sodas carbonated during the rush but i think today i finally got a handle on that.
tuesday night. woodsboss, mario and the damn wrights. i’m excited. chances are i’ll be barefoot and dancing by midnight.

April 20th, 2009 | work life | Tags: | 0 Comments

swimmingly

i haven’t been so happy about a friday night in a long time. i don’t think we sent out a pizza in house that took more than 35 minutes. we lost a few take-out orders before i realized we could handle plenty of take-out orders in record time. by 8pm we were making 30 minutes calls for take-out and sending 20 minute pies to the dining room. was it magic? was it a dream? how could it have gone so well?
in a way, i am always waiting for the anvil to fall… wondering how can i be so happy and content? something must be about to go wrong.

i have started to mildly follow the news again, i had overdosed on the election, then checked out, and now i am finding myself drawn to more news. seems to me obama is tearing it up. i had a guy come in the other day who said at the register that his paycheck had increased by 20 bucks because of a new obama tax cut and that obama bought his pizza. i am about to get a new roof and found out that there is an obama tax break for getting a metal roof. could we already be seeing the stimulus at work for regular folks?

later.

April 3rd, 2009 | work life | Tags: | Comments Off

minis en route for pizza… a half ton of fun

the gainesville/ ocala mini cooper club came to see us last saturday. one of them sent me this photo of them “on their way…”

on another note, i am happy to report that the new oven/ movie premiere/ school carnival/ things have passed in good time… all were a success and i feel like i have emerged on the other side triumphant. what more could i ask for really?

thursday night kicked our collective butts but friday night we pretty much won out. i would have never imagined i could put out a 10 large pie order on a friday night at 6:45pm, and not make any other customers suffer in the process… i even told the kind fellow i spoke with that we had no choice but to make 5 at 6:45 and 5 more at 7:20… and then somehow a small window opened up and the last one came out at 6:45 on the nose. all 10, hot. but you see, the philosophy department at UF has been a good customer of ours for years now, and if i wanted to impress anyone, it’d be the philosophers, right?

actually i have a crew to thank who helped me realize my dream oven scenario… and tonight, when we added up the weights of the 4 pizza guys tonight, we had 999 pounds of pure pizza power perfection.

March 27th, 2009 | very nice, work life | Tags: | Comments Off

tim bryant

one of our funny and clever employees, tim, wrote a serious song but he let me poke fun at it by making this music video. it came on the ipod one night and the kitchen guys were saying how great it would be to see tim singing it all serious and emotional out on the prairie or someplace. so tim and i met up one day and made this video. sorta funny, especially if you know tim.

March 26th, 2009 | work life | Tags: | 0 Comments

st. aug

i love the beach… helps me get away from all my work work work and hear the waves and clear my head and relax…

March 19th, 2009 | home life, work life | Tags: | 0 Comments

klezmer and gatornationals

the photo today is the kelzmer kats playing at lightnin’ salvage this past wednesday night. i do love the klezmer kats. they spill out of out tiny stage, they glitter, the entertain, they make me happy.
gatornationals? well, that’s the yearly race happening at gainesville raceway. we had the gatornational people in tonight and i am going to break it down for you for real right now…. i actually think i made more all meat pies tonight than i have in the past year combined. i made pie after pie after pie of pepperoni, steak, meatball, bacon. beef, ham, bacon, steak, steak, bacon, sausage, pepperoni… it was amazing. i even had 6 cases of bud light on hand and we probably went through most of it. friday night was less busy than we expected but still a 45 min – 1 hour wait, saturday night was the usual kick my ass sort of night and i am just pining for that third oven that we will get very soon…

the pies looked great. people were happy, all except that one cheese slice that came back and the customer said it looked old and bad… now that made me mad. they hadn’t even tasted it and they said it looked “50 minutes old”, i was told by the server. that would have been the best cheese slice they ever bit into if they gave it a chance. they must have never seen carmelized cheese on a slice in their short life… they must be the domino’s sort of pizza eater. i was mad. but, i made them a new slice with extra cheese, which obviously looked fresher and newer, even if it does sit like a brick in their stomach. i should lighten up, i know. it takes time to educate some people about good pizza.

by the way, if i haven’t mentioned it already… the movie night is march 22nd, at my house, 8:30pm. for employees, former employees and close friends.

March 15th, 2009 | work life | Tags: | Comments Off

work work work work work

i closed two days a week so i could keep going. i need the break in the action, the lull in the storm. the great part is getting two days off in a row, the bad part is that sometimes i STILL have to work those days too. sunday i did a mosaic tile project with my family and ruthie’s family out by the treehouse, and joe was there innoculating 150 shitake logs… and monday i did a few repairs that all got bigger and now will carry me over through the week finishing…
i love it. i love to work. i love to be good at what i do. i love the challenge of it. speaking of challenges, saturday night really delivered me one. saturday was the 6 year anniversary of Satchel’s and i was remembering that first night, a friday and 2 tables, and how lonely it was and how i wished i was home with my family… and 6 years later i’ve got 8 deep dish in the bottom oven at the same time, slowing down cooking to a crawl, and i am rotating them all through the paces to get them to finish cooking in the back right where they will carmelize… and moving pies from the top down to finish them and make room for more in the top… and we sent out an hour deep dish, and i knew we could have sent it out quicker if the take out that should have been skipped would have been skipped, and i lost it.

that’s the thing, it’s harder today than it was when i was dead and lonely. it’s harder because it’s still so challenging and humbling and hard. it’s supposed to get easier isn’t it?

the painting is cumberlin island as done by my friend brent. i love this painting. it hangs in my room where i see it every day.

March 9th, 2009 | work life | Tags: | Comments Off

movie update

hold the tux rental…
call the limo rental and suspend your date…

lightnin’ salvage the movie has a possible new date and a new cinema… due to technical difficulties, and contractual awareness, the new plan is to show the movie under the stars with jeff’s projector and screen, at my house, at a date to be revealed.

come to find out, tina couldn’t make it, john orth couldn’t make it… and a sunday is a much better movie release date than monday, so the hope is to find a date when key people can come, and to do what caroline has been arguing for all along, the movie party in the yard.

so now you know.

what? you want to see a picture?

in these troubling times, we need to be flexible, like rubber bands, why look here what rubber bands can do?

March 8th, 2009 | work life | Tags: | Comments Off

ny times

hey hey, lucky us to get mentioned in the ny times today. the resident artist for LSE, john, is in New York and gets a paper and calls me, “hey, Satchel’s is mentioned in the NY times today” “you mean the paper on every corner of the city?” i ask? “actually, every city in the nation…”

wow. that’s cool. in case you missed it, it was a full page spread on visiting gainesville in the escape section and i have copied the paragraph about us here:
After such a contemplative day, you might want to channel your inner college student once more. Do that at Satchelâ€™s Pizza, where Satchel Raye has created a restaurant/toy and magic trick garage/live music space and boccie court that is a far cry from Dominoâ€™s. In an out-of-the-way neighborhood and ornamented with all manner of gewgaws, Satchelâ€™s requires a certain adventurous spirit, but the restaurant is surprisingly congenial and the pizza and salads justly famous. With luck, youâ€™ll snag a table in the 1965 Ford Falcon van permanently moored out front. Your order may take a while, but in this town, thereâ€™s always one topic to kick around while you wait: How â€™bout those Gators?

the article was well written except for one small flaw in the last sentence.. it’s “how ’bout THEM gators” but you can’t expect out-of-towners to know everything.

the website was even listed so i checked to see if we had a spike in traffic to our site, but as of 2pm today, it still looks normal, which is about 100 hits a day.

had a pretty big problem wednesday night with the ovens… there were more than a few pies sent out that were sub-par, but i had worked 7am – 5:30 and didn’t get the memo until thursday morning and the problems have now been fixed. we even had a table walk out i heard. this is sad news. on the bright side i did get a new oven yesterday which will be helping us out a lot, as soon as we get it hooked up, which may be a while… but in the meantime we are good to go, but soon we will be super duper good to go, but i just can’t get into all the details here…if you got a bad pie wednesday night please let us make it up to you and sorry.

i have two favorite quotes from the times article… i love where the author says i have created a restaurant/toy and magic trick garage… what is a trick garage? i’ll tell you what, it’s lightnin’ salvage. and the other part i liked is that she said the van was permanently “moored” out front, that’s cute.

March 6th, 2009 | work life | Tags: | 0 Comments

blog readers know more

this invite only movie will be showing for the employees of satchel’s/ LSE. you are probably the first person to ever see the poster.

the film was saved thanks to danny lore of LSE, and his friend steve:

i’m working on the oven situation… new oven vs. a third oven… it’s complicated. my brain hurts from thinking about it so much. my neck has a kink from talking on the phone too much, trying to use my hands instead of hold the phone….

keep the movie on the down lo – it’s an employee party thing.

March 3rd, 2009 | work life | Tags: | Comments Off

bummed

the good news is that tim here found a wig on the LSE free table that perfectly matches his hair color.
the bad news is that although i tried to not care about the craigslist person who seems to hate satchel’s and loves to write about how evil we are, he got me. i’m assuming it was this person who has been ranting about my restaurant on craigslist that signed me up for crazy amounts of spam email. i came home tonight to 50 or so spam emails. i have been signed up for all sorts of things… and that’s cold blooded. but, i guess i put myself out there you know. i try and open a place where people can have a good living and be creative and of course there will be enemies who hate all things positive. it’s one thing to rant on craigslist about it, it’s another level when you start messing with a man’s email. i hope this person reads my blog so they can get my formal “congratulations”, you have now started more than hating my restaurant, you have now starting hating me personally. you have succeeded in making my life harder.

i put myself out there though. i mean, i advertise and promote my restaurant like a maniac. i brand my brand, i probably deserve it.

we had a really busy night. i was surprised because it was so cold. but it was good. we got behind, we sent the wrong pie to the wrong table a couple times, we had to give away some food, but i honestly think we did our best. we need a third oven. we desperately need a third oven.

my movie is a roller coaster. i thought i was done but my wife kicked that idea out the door. she tried to watch my movie and she couldn’t. she needed to take breaks so she wouldn’t get dizzy. i know the movie has its flaws but because i am the cameraman and editor and all, i see it. it makes sense to me, but it made her sick. i am back to square one in a way. i am trying to re-structure and re-locate clips and scenes. i was pretty depressed today to basically start over in organizing the movie. i set a date of april 27th for the world premiere.

yes, it’s no wonder that some person out there hates me and decides to get me signed up for all kinds of spam… i should have a separate work and personal email. i should expect the ridicule. i am too big for my britches now. the restaurant is too popular for some. i understand that.

February 21st, 2009 | work life | Tags: | Comments Off

heart day

good weekend, hard sometimes but good. friday was out of control busy as usual. we did alright.
saturday day was out of control busy and saturday night was busy, but under control busy. probably the rain that slowed things down. but we need the rain so cool.

the movie is well back underway to completion. i will admit i have been obsessing over it for 8 days now. if all goes well, we could have an april release. the title changed, and the ending is shaping up. i must admit i haven’t been so excited about a project in a long time. and last week i thought i would never finish but now i think there is a chance. if only my computer can keep up with my brain…

my mom showed up at my house today with 3 cakes… one for my son, one for my daughter, and one for my wife… all of them homemade and heart shaped. then for me, i got heart shaped and iced sugar cookies, with red hots, my favorite.

now look at this… carrot cake for my wife… one of the few remaining cookies for me… can you believe this woman?
i tell you, if i turn out a success in life, you’ll know who to blame. my mother is an inspiration.

February 15th, 2009 | home life, work life | Tags: | Comments Off

danny and silas

i should have kept my mouth shut about the movie. i should have just not said a sacred word about it… because just last night, merely 25 hours ago, i did something to wipe the movie from my hard drive. i don’t know what it was, the program was freezing up and i panicked. it all remains a blur to me now, the questions the computer asked me, the answers i gave.. i did something real wrong and now it seems that my 6 years of work is lost… sortof.

i say sortof because i did find about half of the movie in another file and edited clips from the movie in the trash, so theoretically i could re-build the movie but…

today was one of the worst days i can remember having, and some really great things happened today… but i felt really depressed and sad, and it wasn’t until around midnight until that turned around for me.

i have a bit of new hope for the movie, i am starting to try and visualize re-making the second half and making it better. i am starting to think that i just need a new release date… i get to set the release date anyway… so what if i said, christmas 2009? no one would think i was a loser for wiping out half my movie if it came out at christmas right? to be honest, i’m not even sure at this time if i really do have the first 30 minutes… i had to work a lot at satchel’s and i didn’t have the hours to research what pieces i can find.

danny finished the new Lightnin’ Salvage stencil on the LSE chalkboard and brought it in tonight. i am using my wife’s computer tonight because i am mad at my computer, so you got lucky and i found this great photo on here. she gets a different set of photos than i do since we have separate cameras. it’s fun for me to check her photos once in a while, seems i always forget to look…

i’ve told you too much already… but tonight i came up with a new name for the movie which lets tammy and josh off the hook for their scene, and i think it might even have the potential to improve the final product.

thanks for tuning in, satchel

February 8th, 2009 | home life, work life | Tags: | 0 Comments

work and stuff

another week has passed by me with lightnin’ speed, and my project list has begun to hurt my shoulders. pictured are shitake mushrooms growing between satchel’s and LSE. you may have eaten some of these on your pizza in the last week. we are very close to being out now but i was impressed with the many customers who tried them. seeing that we are growing them one may get the mistaken impression that they are free for us, but that is not the case. we bought these logs from a farmer and we also pay to water them and for Joe to come by every so often to soak the logs in a trough. joe is spearheading the upcoming shitake workshop (march 21st i think) and we hope to innoculate even more logs for our own use at that time.
we’ve started to collect emails from customers so i can send out the occasional newsletter to inform about events and such, thanks to any of you who signed up. the list is in LSE if you want to be in the know. i can’t tell about everything here on the blog and the newsletter will be a different format anyway. eventually one will be able to sign up online, cory will be sorting out the details, although once his baby arrives the site updates will surely slow…

i am excited to announce the light brightening at the end of the tunnel that is the movie i have been making. it is about some people at satchel’s, about satchel, LSE and buying a home. i hope to be finishing it up in the next couple months if all goes well. i hope to talk to someone at the hippodrome about renting the theatre for an employee viewing…

i want to tell you really bad about a treehouse but will wait and let this creation unfold slowly. i am still looking for a source for red clay for the bocce court if anyone has any ideas i would love to hear them.

February 5th, 2009 | work life | Tags: | 0 Comments

happy thanksgiving (in january)

ok, so one of these individuals, was diagnosed with a brain tumor, and the crew organized to throw a thanksgiving dinner as a “we love you” to the person.
also raised was over $400 for the week of work the individual had to miss.

i’m telling you, this is a family! look at this fine bunch of people. how many office parties look like this?

we are definitely so thankful for all we have.

February 1st, 2009 | home life, Uncategorized, very nice, work life | Tags: | 0 Comments

stand by me

had a bad night. a table complained about their pie and then i got an email complaint about a pie too. these things always bring me down, even though i know we are doing our best, we feed too many people to make them all happy. this video was also in my inbox so that helped to bring me back up to even.

January 31st, 2009 | work life | Tags: | 0 Comments

not bummed now

i finished the movie, but the title is not being released yet. i should have the poster out next week and will unveil it here first. i am going to try and move the world premiere up to march or early april if i can. i watched it last night with danny and we had a good time. i’m excited. it was a hard road but now it’s done. i may decide to make it into a series to post on youtube. it’s over an hour and a half so i don’t know how feasible that is. anyway, i think it turned out pretty good for a guy who is not a film maker. i think the employees are going to love it.

we were slammed tonight, of course. our busiest hour was between 9 and 10pm. weird. at 10 pm (closing) we still had a LOT of tickets still up. i was cooking to about 10:30. the pies were looking good.

i am hoping to buy another oven this week. i want to stack 3 high because we need the space desperately. if i can pull it off, i will come add an extra position of oven and i will personally be the oven guy on the weekends. we’ll speed things up by 10 minutes per pie easily.

i’m so beat. i’m amazed after nearly 6 years doing this, it still kicks my butt. 6 year anniversary is only 1 week away. more later

for those of you readers who may not know, the picture above is a snapshot of our gift shop.

January 28th, 2009 | work life | Tags: | 0 Comments

brent comes though 4 U

here i am, on my birthday, roasting marshmallows in my back yard. brent came through for me and i can post pictures again. funny how i need so much help to lead my electronic life. someone in oregon requested the ability to post comments so brent is working on that too. i think you’ll have to log on or something, we can’t just have anyone commenting… business has been solid, pizzas have been crispy, and i am bogged way down with a million projects: stained glass, painting, a treehouse, new booth, shitake farm, a ramp where there used to be a step at work, a gate for employees at the employee parking lot, a new fence and walkway, a new rock garden under the junk sign, updates on the satchel’s sign, updates on the ipods, manager’s newsletters… i don’t have time to write all million things so trust me.
i do have some new pictures to bring you, so let me go find them. back soon.

January 26th, 2009 | work life | Tags: | 0 Comments

butt kickin’

anyone who looks close might see how many tickets we have hanging at 8pm on saturday night. this is pretty typical and it always feels the same… stressful. 1 1/2 hour wait for take out is normal. 1 hour for to-go waiting is par for the course, and 45-50 minutes food to your table is the best we can manage. i’m working on trying to see if we can fit a third oven stacked on the other two. it will be a tight squeeze because the hood hangs low… but if it can be done i will get it done.

danny is helping me get the movie back together. helping by taking some really good shots while working at LSE. i need the fresh footage to finish off the flick.
gotta run. more later.

P.S. these aren’t all the tickets… the rail to the right is the tickets that need to be made, the tickets on the left rail are the ones we are working on, the tickets on the top rails are take-out, and the two rails you don’t see are pies that are cooking in the top or bottom ovens…

Canada Pharmacy Xanax

January 22nd, 2009 | work life | Tags: | 0 Comments

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