This guest post was originally run on March 27, 2015. though she is no longer a student, and, in fact, is a real-life engineer,  I believe her opinion about pizza remains the same.

I think I have indicated in the past that my brother David wholeheartedly believes that I am making a grave error by having Friday be a day that I review a book. Instead, he insists Friday is Pizza Day and I should therefore be reviewing pizza restaurants instead of books on Fridays. In fact, I have made it perfectly clear that I — a pizza lover married to a pizza lover — have nothing against pizza or Pizza Day. I often eat pizza on Fridays. I just enjoy my book reviews.

Not to be dissuaded, he called in reserves — his middle daughter — my niece and namesake — Jessika Kristine. You would think being named after me would make her a bit more understanding, but apparently love for pizza knows no bounds. 

Therefore, I acquiesced and am giving her her day in court, so to speak. Food Court, at any rate.

Jessie is an environmental engineering student at the University of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff.

I must admit, she makes a compelling argument…..

Pizza Day

By Jessie Gloor

The weekend started off not unlike any other: me working on some project with some grand plans of maybe drinking too much. And then I got a call from my dad that would change the course of my life forever. Okay, maybe not my life, but certainly my weekend. And maybe not forever. Maybe just for the weekend.

“Do you think that Friday is Pizza Day?” he asked me. “Definitely,” I said. “It’s a fact. The Aquabats wrote an entire song about it.”

Before I get any more in to this, you should know that this question was inspired by the fact that my aunt typically reserves her Friday blog posts for book reviews. Crazy, right? Who wants to read books when there’s so much pizza to be had in the world? My father suggested that she should, at the absolute minimum, also review a pizza place and stick that at the very end of her blog post. Is that too much to ask? A shout out to pizza? After everything pizza has done for her?

But how could I get her to throw out whatever book she was reading and replace it with a hot, glorious slice of pizza? My aunt is, after all, a well-educated pizza skeptic who would need some serious convincing.

I set out to navigate the dangerous waters that are the Bashas’ grocery store (which is where I work) to collect some hard data.

This highly organized and completely scientific tally sheet that was definitely not written on a piece of receipt paper represents the amount of frozen pizzas bought on Friday compared to Saturday.

Personally, I visualize things best when they are presented to me graphically, so here you go.

Then, as if that wasn’t enough, I wanted to mathematically prove my thesis that Friday is indeed Pizza Day. Please view my findings below.

If you’d like, you can take a moment to imagine a montage of me spending hours after hours on the math, frustrated, falling asleep at my desk, and a concerned friend trying to get me to eat something, probably pizza. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

As my final thought, I would like to offer a one-paragraph review of my favorite pizza place as a template for my aunt (who is surely persuaded by now). Ahem. Deep breath, here it goes:

My favorite day to ride my bike to school is Friday. It’s my favorite day because I allow myself the detour that takes me in front of Fratelli’s Pizza. The smell is in the air. Oh yes, they are firing up the stone-deck oven. I’ll see you later, Fratelli’s pizza, I say with a thumbs up. Thankfully, the only class I have on Fridays is fluid mechanics, and we always, ALWAYS have a quiz. I spend hours studying extra hard for these quizzes so I can finish and get out of Dodge with enough time to make it back to the pizza place right when it opens for lunch. Fratelli Fridays, that’s what my climbing partner and I call our weekly gatherings here. Fratelli’s has a “slice of the week” each week. Past weeks include “The Dude” which is ranch, chicken, bacon, and kettle chips, or “The Elmo”, tomato, zucchini, garlic, and feta cheese. My personal favorite is The Flagstaff, under which the description reads: “the hippies keep ordering this, so we put it on the menu!” Basil pesto, sun dried tomato, mozzarella, artichoke heart, ricotta, and garlic.” I’m going to go ahead and leave it at that. I could go on about the atmosphere of the place, the friendliness and good-humor of the staff, and maybe throw in a slightly irritated comment about how the food never seems to come out fast enough. But then I would follow it with the observation that good food rarely does. I’d rather leave the audience with the thought of a hot slice of The Flagstaff. Leave em’ with their stomachs rumbling and their mouths watering, that’s what I always say.