Marching Bands and Pasta

Yesterday Garrett and I went to a band competition held at MTSU called Contest of Champions. This really brought me back to our senior year of high school when I attended several of Garrett's band competitions. Minus one competition in the rain that was obviously rigged (not that I'm bitter or anything), I always enjoyed the experience. But it was so nerve-wracking to wait and find out if they won (which they always did, well, minus that rigged one! :-P)

Contest of Champions has a preliminary round where everyone plays, and then a final round for the best bands, which this year was reserved for 8 out of the 21 bands. We decided to attend just the preliminary round and got there just before the Class AAA competition started (this means the big school bands). Garrett's alma mater Siegel performed, as well as mine (Riverdale - though I was never in the band), and then Garrett's cousin's band, John Overton. Both Siegel and John Overton made it to the finals, which was great, and Siegel ultimately won - for its third year in a year!

(Siegel)

(Overton)

After watching the preliminary round and speaking to Garrett's cousin, we decided to go out to eat and head home. We wanted to watch finals, but it was going to run so late, not to mention it was getting colder! Garrett was just driving as we tried to figure out where to go, when we decided on a new Italian place in town called Gondolier.


We were seated immediately, which is very unusual for a new restaurant in this town. And though it wasn't quaint like Marina's, we still liked the vibe of it and thought it looked good for a renovated Shoney's. Right away our waitress brought us bread sticks and, to my delight, marinara sauce! Right away I was excited. It took us a while to decide on what to get because there was so much on the menu! When it comes to Italian, I pretty much stick to lasagna or pizza/calzones, though at Olive Garden I get ravioli. At Gondolier, however, they had several menu items that sounded like something I would like to try. I ultimately decided on baked cannelloni and Garrett had a sampler that included spaghetti, chicken Parmesan, manicotti, and lasagna. Salad came with the meal and before we finished those our food was ready.

We both enjoyed our meals and were filled sufficiently. However, my cannelloni had way more ground beef than it should have considering the amount of noodle and sauce. We just took some of it with us along with Garrett's leftover spaghetti to eat together later. I tried everything on Garrett's plate (except the spaghetti, since it was just noodles and the same sauce as everything else), and it was all good, though I don't know if I would necessarily order any of those meals. The lasagna was just not as good as Puleo's or Marina's. There is a tortellini dish with Italian sausage I want to try, and I would be curious to see how the pizza and calzones compare to the pasta, as they may turn out to be more of their thing. Still, we enjoyed it and having the bread sticks and marinara at the beginning was definitely a nice touch.

One last thing to note about the restaurant is that they have a wide array of cakes available for dessert. This reminded me of Dino's, an Italian restaurant in Corbin, Kentucky, that has a wide variety of cheesecake. There was less cheesecake and more other kinds of cake at Gondolier, but we decided to take home a slice of brownie cheesecake.

Brownie and cheesecake are not the same consistency, so that made this cake challenging to cut, at least after an hour or so in our fridge. It was not amazing but it was good; if we did dessert there again, I think Garrett and I would be better off getting separate things, since this was supposed to be a compromise between our two loves. There was a Death By Chocolate cake that certainly caught my eye.

How was everyone else's weekend?