#101

My previous blog post was #100.  Those initial 100 were easy, but this one, #101, has been difficult I’m running out of Nebaletan Words of the Day and stories about my mother (Grandma Joanne)…just kidding. I have a backlog of nearly 100 more blog posts. And besides, there are lots more pizzas to eat too 🙂

As you’ve likely gathered in the previous 100, numbers are important to me.  I was a horrible reader as a child (which is funny, I’m a voracious reader now);  but I could look at a bunch of scrabbled numbers and sort them in my head;  add, subtract, multiply, divide, square roots, big numbers in my head on the spot.  Numbers made and make perfect sense to me. 

Table of Contents

1. Numbers
2. Nebaletan Word of the Day – Medigan
3. Pizza Rating – Bavaro, Downtown Sarasota, FL

Numbers

Seemingly, becoming an engineer was a natural fit; but no.  I could look at Bernoulli’s equation and immediately identify the Fourier transform and ace my tests, but when I graduated, I had no clue.  I was a great book learner but had no practical skill.  Thank goodness for cycling which forced me to become a mechanic and a way better engineer.

I might’ve written about this before, but my favorite numbers are 9 and 50.

• #9 because of my birthday of 9/9 and wore #9 in Little League and one year in HS baseball
• #50 was my football number in HS and sometimes in college. 

I wore #50 to honor my cousin Nicky who first wore that number and played the same position (center) at the same HS a few years previous.  Nicky wasn’t big, but he was tough, and I wanted (and continue to want) to be just like him!

Our son wore #50 in HS football (and played center too) and daughter in club soccer also wore #50.  In college, those numbers weren’t available to them…unfortunately!

So, if numbers are so important, I’m not quite sure why I didn’t celebrate #100 though.

In the very least, I should have had a party at blog #50 (see it here).  #50 was about 2 years and about 300 homemade pizzas ago! 

But since #100 had the same typos and grammatical errors, even when using AI grammar checkers, it was hard to celebrate #100! 

So, I guess, I’m still not good enough to write, but who’s stopping me?!  Just like when I was a kid, I just wish that letters were numbers and sentences were equations…maybe if I diagram them!?  Next blog post….

Nebaletan Word of the Day – Medigan

Two blog posts ago (here) I defined the terms mangiagake/mangiacake as a mild and sideways insult to WASPy Americans;  pretty much all my in-laws! 

Another of these insults, although less mild, is the term MEDIGAN (pronounced – med-a-gone). 

As I mentioned in that post, mangiagake/mangiacake, was used by my father and his family (from Avellino) while MEDIGAN was used by my mother.  Not sure if that’s another Napoli vs. Avellino thing or not.

In context in a conversation with my mom (Grandma Joanne):

• Me, “Ma, I’m going over to Brian’s house for macaroni.”
• Ma, “That MEDIGAN probably uses Ragu.”  Jarred, premade sauce was forbidden in our house as a kid and still is for me today!zit
• Then Ma, as usual, goes a step further, “And they’re probably going to have spaghetti.  Those MEDIGANS.   Ziti (her and my favorite) holds the sauce better!  When will THEY learn?”

And although Grandma Joanne really liked Brian and his family, THEY were MEDIGANS and not Nebaletanr!

BTW – in addition to MEDIGAN, I’d also hear Merigan and Amerigan.   If you notice, the word progresses closer to American.   And, it seems to me that the further each generation was from being an immigrant, the further the word progressed from MEDIGAN.