Parma Pizza Quest

Since Mariella and I don't party down much anymore on Friday nights, we've started a new "project."

We're trying to sample every pizzeria in Parma. We've long been fans of Antonio's - it's the gold standard but we can walk to at least 10 different pie purveyors that we've never even given a shot.

Here's our ground rules:
1. Same order at every place:
Large pizza with sausage & mushroom
A salad - to health it up*
2. No national chains
3. We pick it up. We don't want them knowing where we live in case upset the Mozzarella cartel "disappear" for a while.

Yesterday marked PPQ episode 3. Here are our findings thus far:

Episode 1: State Road Pizza

As a rule most of the food you find on State Road is pretty fantastic i.e., Tradesman Tavern's Chicken Paprikash, Kielbasa from State Road Meats, The Daze Wings at Good Olde Daze. That's why we were so shocked that our mission got off to such a disappointing start. The crust was cardboardesque - possibly once frozen. The sauce forgettable. I don't think either of us ate the leftovers for Saturday breakfast which is a telling commentary. On the plus side, they did put a LOT of cheese on the salad. Grade: F

Episode 2: Tony's Pizza

Approximately 67% of Mariella's family goes by some derivation of "Anthony." So we high hopes for this joint. We hoped that this State Road establishment would reaffirm our State-Road-food-quality theory. It didn't. It wasn't bad pizza. But you should know that my motto is "even bad pizza is still pretty good." It's crust wasn't great. And Mariella found the sausage too peppery. I think I'd get it again if Antonio's was closed and I had a coupon. Grade: C+

Episode 3: Napoleon's Pizza

A pizza place named after a war-mongering Frenchman? We all remember from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure that Napoleon loved ice cream - so how would our third State Road establishment pay homage to him with pizza. They're tagline is something along the lines of "We conquer your taste buds." And I have to say I was pretty impressed. I thought the crust was good. (Mariella wasn't a huge fan of the crust. She apparently has higher standards than myself.) The toppings were flavorful and the sauce was pretty good too.
I'd order this again. Grade: B+

So those were our first 3 selections. We look forward to reviewing more in the coming weeks (or years - we're not sure how many pizzerias there are in Parma.)

*Note: Pizzeria salads are essentially a fistful of lettuce topped by a bucket of cheese.

Photo credit: Ron Diggity

Validation!

We've always known our baby was beautiful - and now we have proof and TROPHIES!

Our little supermodel won, not one, but two trophies! One people's choice for most fashionable (even though we didn't enter her in that category and we received the wrong trophy) and the judge's choice for most comical. Mariella has already pointed out the fact that i didn't think she had a shot in that category.

Thanks to all the voters & judges that made my tiny-baby-topped-trophy dreams come true.

Cute baby helps save babies!

With our new early alarm clock/daughter, we watch a lot more morning news broadcasts - namely WKYC. So one morning a few weeks back, Mark Nolan tells us about this photogenic baby contest with the proceeds that benefit Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital. So we visit the contest website. Everything checks out and we learned that you even get a 9x12 print of the portrait. We'd been dragging our feet/too busy to actually get professional baby shots done. So, what the heck?

We went to the mall early as I expected a lot of families. We were the second group in line. We debated an outfit change but stuck with what she was wearing.

When it was our turn, the photographer set down a blanket an had me sit her on it. Rose wasn't really having any of it. We got a lot of shots that look like this:

Mariella told the photographer that if Rose is standing, she'll smile. So I held Rose in a standing position and she went into Supermodel mode, flashing smile after smile. A small crowd even gathered and started cheering her on.

After the shoot you have to go through all the pictures and select which ones you wish to enter into the contest. There are four categories: Precious (smiling), Beautiful (not smiling), Comical & Stylish. We entered her in the first three. Here are the shots:

Precious

Comical

Beautiful

This is a judged contest. If Rose is named Cleveland's Most Photogenic Baby, she goes on to compete in the national competition and the grand prize is some kind of modeling contract. I don't really care about that part so much. But I will be disappointed if we don't bring home one of these:

That's right, trophies with little golden babies on top - one of the top ten most hilarious things I've ever seen. And I'd like for Rose to win one based on her beauty (or preciousness or comicalness) but there is another way! You see, professional talent scouts will be judging the contest. But there are also trophies for People's Choice. And the public can vote by making a donation to Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital. Rose gets one vote for every 50 cents we collect. So whether or not you think my baby is adorable is immaterial, consider clicking the button below to help kids in need (and help an egotistical dad add some hardware to the trophy case!) Seriously, we'd appreciate any support you could give and I promise not to be too crushed, should Rose not win. You can also give (and see the photos of Rose's competition) at Great Northern Mall on August 20 & 21 between 10am & 7pm.

A few disclaimers:

1. Both Mariella and myself are pretty skeezed out by Toddlers in Tiaras and will never become pageant parents. This is as close as it gets.

2. We realize that every parent thinks their child is the most beautiful, but, c'mon! Look at that baby.

Markiella + 1.

We've been horrible about keeping this up to date. Mainly because we're now parents! If you're reading this blog, you probably already new this. Our little Rose arrived on April 29th. And so far it's been fantastic. She's now a 3-months old and doing great. We'll try to update with a little more regularity but we are working on some side projects.

Frankly, we think she's the most beautiful baby ever but we're a little biased.

Off-roading

So got mariella a new, baby-friendly ride. Look for her driving by looking fly in her new subaru outback!

Baby Beyonce'

Mariella thinks our baby's gonna dance like this.

Granpa's place

A fine shopping establishment in bonita springs

Great Expectations

A little while back I came home to find a book and a pregnancy test on our kitchen table.

Multiple home pregnancy tests (those buggers are expensive) revealed that we are, in fact, pregnant. We're SUPER excited. And, no, we're not finding out what it is. We'll be happy either way. We don't have names picked out as of yet. Our due date is April 25, 2010.

We were pregnant for Vince's wedding - a few people noticed that Mariella wasn't drinking then again it's not like she's a boozer to begin with. I started asking bartenders to put a lime wedge in her 7ups to make people think she wasn't a teetotaler.

We waited a little while before telling anyone - even though it was killing both of us. When the time came we knew we didn't want to just tell them. We wanted to have some fun. As luck would have it, the weekend after we found out we were expecting we attended the Feast in Little Italy. There we found this bib:


We obviously bought it for her dad. But we still needed bibs for the grandmothers and the great grandmother, so we headed to Toys R Us/Babies R Us. While we were there there was a baby SHRIEKING at the top of her lungs for a REALLY long time. I turned to say something to Mariella and before I could open my mouth she said, "Mark, we can't give it back now."

We selected this bib for our mothers:

And this bib for my grandmother (they didn't have any great grandmother options):

To actually tell them, we invited them over for dinner. We were making ribs. We just wanted to tell the parents at first so we told my mom that my sisters weren't invited because I wasn't sure we had enough food - which was an outright lie. We had TONS of ribs. But I digress. So before dinner everyone was sitting in the backyard and Mariella said, "We're ready to eat but just be aware that these ribs are REAL messy. So we got you something." With that we gave them the bibs and hugs all around. They all claim to know that something was up. But we swore them to secrecy as no one else knew. It seems the entire island of Sicily found out the next day. As did random strangers my father-in-law encountered. (he's VERY excited to be a Grandpa.)

We wanted to do something similar for my sisters and brother-in-law but schedules never allowed, so we made them all custom bibs. Mary and Joan stopped over for pizza after we worked a Browns game (I do security - that's a lot of stories for another time). Mariella warned them that the pizza was messy and I put this bib on Mary:

Mary's bib is the most cryptic and it wouldn't be out of the ordinary for me to do something like this, so she didn't get it until she saw Joan's bib (not pictured) which read: My Aunt is Inked - in reference to Joan's newest tattoo.

Kristen ended up getting a phone call to tell her the news. She wasn't sure if she believed me. I don't think she's ever actually received her bib but here it is:

Vince's bib was the first one we thought of:

Mariella thought my first attempt at Carli's might be deemed offensive:

So Carli ended up getting this Irish-themed number:

Since Lisa and Karen live out-of-state, they got their bibs mailed to them. Henry and Sammy are excited to have a new cousin on the way. Here's Lisa's:

And Karen's (which, I guess is really more for her kids, Maya and Zeke):

Here's the very first picture of our new little person, taken at 10 weeks. I think s/he has my eyes.

There will be plenty more updates to follow - including how we told Mariella's cousins.

Chloe's Costumes

This is one of the costumes that Mariella got for the stupid dog to wear. It's pretty hilarious.

Unfortunately, she's now dressed as a satellite dish.



We were sitting on the couch and I Chloe was licking her paw incessantly so I kept yelling at her. I took a closer look and realized that she was bleeding all over the place. As it turns out she split one of her nails on who knows what. So a trip to the emergency vet clinic and $140 later, she's got a protective cone, antibiotics and a pretty pink bandage.

Band From U.N.C.L.E.

Here's Carli and the rest of the Band from U.N.C.L.E. rocking the crowd at her wedding.

The band from U.N.C.L.E. At vince and carli's wedding.

Carli on the skins. Her dad, her uncle bill and uncle tony on guitar.

The happily married couple

Pictures with vince before the wedding

Al & the world's tallest ball washer

Seen during vince's bachelor party outing.

More fame!

Markiella gets a shout-out in this Cleveland Magazine article. You can say you knew us when...