Side Eye. And Love Notes.
When we achieve World Pie Domination, I'm going to hire someone to follow me around with a clipboard to capture all the things that go through my mind and then fall through the cracks and never become reality. A few things worth mentioning...
- We will be at the Best of Columbia 2015 party tomorrow night at The Broadway hotel. We will be serving up delicious pie, wearing our newly branded #WPD shirts, and trying to not throw side eye at the winners of the categories we were nominated in. Kidding. Sorta.
- Speaking of events, #pieandbooze is scheduled for next Thursday, April 30th. We will hang with the peeps from Dogmaster Distillery and make pecan pies and Mint Juleps. Whatever else this town offers next Thursday night, I guarantee you that we will be the most fun. Tickets available here: https://everyeventgives.com/event/pieandbooze.
- We are working on a fun new video project with our new friends Lindsey and Lee. They own a video production company and are excited to help us tell the story of pie in an entirely new way...one that isn't filmed on my iPhone with a bunch of background noise. Lindsey and Lee stopped by this morning to film an hour or so of me making Chocolate Bourbon Pecan. The goal is to have a short 30-second video available on the website and other social media platforms about Chocolate Bourbon Pecan pie. They are also considering just spending a day with us and capturing whatever goes on at PJP Buttonwood on film. I think I'll apologize in advance...
- Many of you know Sanae...she's worked with us since last fall and um, basically she is AH-MAZING. We love her...and she is leaving us. Isn't that always the way it goes? Her husband has accepted a great new job in the St. Louis area and her last day with us will be June 5th. If Jeanne merely thinks of PJP without Sanae, a lone tear trickles down her cheek...like the sad Native American watching litterbugs in those 1970s commercials.
- Speaking of Sanae, just she and I were at PJP Buttonwood together for a bit this afternoon. A customer stopped by and picked out eight large pies and asked us to tie ribbons around them. ALL OF MY WORST FEARS WERE SUDDENLY REALIZED. I don't do fancy ribbons...in fact, I really actually sort of stink at it. Sanae and I panicked. I called Jeanne at home and screeched that she must return to PJP Buttonwood ASAP. So if you were on South Providence around 12:30 afternoon and a silver Ford Explorer passed you at 80 miles an hour, it was just your average ribbon-on-a-pie-box crisis.
- Behind-The-Scenes-Tech-Guru Jason printed out a PDF of the blog from the first post to our one year anniversary on April 17th and it is 609 pages. Granted, some of that is because of weird page breaks caused by moving to a webpage to a PDF, but still...it is the entire PJP history in one book. It makes me happy and freaks me out, all at the same time. Does that make sense?
- I can't figure out the delay in the new Starbucks completion. The annual Starbucks Happy Hour with Half-Price Frappuccinos is apparently May 1 - May 10, so the sooner, the better. Mock the frappuccino if you must, but I'm still drinking it anyway.
- 96.3% of MU Journalism students have been in PJP Buttonwood this week. They are working on final projects and I know that their professors must get so very tired of seeing our faces and hearing our story.
- In a new twist, we have some Industrial Engineering students who have spent some time with us. As their final semester project, they are going to make some recommendations regarding our work flow and work processes. In my opinion, they deserve an A+ for even hanging out for a week and not breaking into hives after discovering we only have one bin of flour and one of sugar and we just walk back and forth between them all day. I think they are going to entitle their project "#Inefficient".
- Earlier today, a person that works for Gumby's Pizza called and asked if we would trade our pie for their pizza pie. As in...several large pizzas for several large pies? Yes, yes we would. When the delivery guy showed up to make the exchange, this is the box he handed me...
In short, I didn't have to cook dinner for my family AND I got a love note written on a pizza box. And that is why I might just have the best job in the world...