Cheese.

Truth.

"Do something you love and you'll never work a day in your life." - Confucius

Yeah, it's been that sort of day. :)

Jeans Day be damned.

We are rarely able to wear jeans at the office, and the next few Fridays are an exception to the rule. Still, I was in no mood for jeans today. I wore pants yesterday, and that's more than enough for one week.

Plus I got a new skirt and it begged me to wear it. Begged.

White cardi: Express

Blue button down: NY&Co

Purple pencil skirt: Halogen via Nordstrom

Pointy Mary Janes: Target

Jeans?  I don't need no stinkin' jeans.

Happy Friday!

Five for Friday, vol 17

1.  You are more into Pinterest than I am lately.

2.  If you fall asleep on the couch and I start watching Real Housewives, you swear it gives you nightmares.

3.  You manage Tucker's twitter account.

4.  If we need something from the store, your immediate response is "Do they sell it at Costco??"

5.  You keep me knee deep in fruit salad.

I love you.

Blogoll debacle.

One more reason to looooove Blogger.

So by now you know that when I converted my old blog into this one, it basically jacked my RSS feed and deleted the old one entirely.  Thank GOD I had the foresight to export it first and save everything.  But anyway, in having to basically start from scratch, I have to recreate my pages and blogroll.  However, it appears that I can only add blogs from my Reader if they are Blogger blogs, and therefore a substantial chunk of some of my favorites are missing.  Most of this will be corrected over the weekend, now that I know the problem, but I'd still like to put this out there.  If you have a blog and want to be added, please comment and let me know!

(I'd love it if you followed this one officially as well, but that's an entirely different issue.  I am sad for the 100+ followers I lost, seemingly forever.)

Happy Friday!

Let's Fall In Love: In Which We Dance

After the cake was cut, it was time for my new husband and I to take to the dance floor.  I had always loved couples' first dances as a guest at weddings, and ours was no exception.  Picking a song had been a no brainer.  When Mr had planned his proposal, he had made a playlist that he called "2009 to Infinite."  Adorable, right?  it was full or sappy love songs in varying degrees of significance to us as a couple.  Just as he got on one knee, the first few notes of "Let's Fall in Love" began to play, a song that hadn't meant a thing to us before, but would mean everything from that point forward.  There was really no question that it would be our First Dance as well.

We spun around the dance floor, laughing and feeling giddy.  You'd think it would be awkward, having everyone watch us like that, but it was another one of those moments when it was like the rest of the room just sort of melted away. 

 

 It was quite romantic.

And quite fun too.

In case you missed it ...

I bought a dress and completely changed it.  We had a marathon final week of engagement.  I giggled my way through our rehearsal.  Kenny got grilled at our rehearsal dinner.  The groomsmen ran amok in downtown Springfield. The girls got gorgeous.  We exchanged mushy wedding-day gifts.  The guys got fancy and then got dancy.  I became a Bride.  There was a first First Look. I shared my Somethings.  The boys made the most of trolley-time. And did their thing on the Capital grounds. The girls took photos at the hotel. Everyone arrived at the church. We walked down the aisle. We declared our intentions and my cousin preached. We exchanged our vows. Our hands were blessed. Kenny put a ring on it and kissed his bride. We were pronounced Mr and Mrs! We left the church in a blizzard of confetti, and took a "just-married" trolley ride. We made it legal. We took pictures with our families, followed by wedding party portraits. I hit a low point. We received our guests. The wedding party was introduced. My Dad checked his toast off of his to-do list. Our Best Man and Maid of Honor shared toasts as well. The we cut our cake.

Just in time for scarf season.

I swear, sometimes I am remedial at being a girl.  As girly as I am, I fail at some of the basics.  I can't french braid.  I only recently learned how to paint my nails. Until I watched this Youtube tutorial, I could tie a scarf exactly one way.

Girl card redeemed.

Living in a Glass House

I feel like I've been inundated lately with articles and discussions about why plastic food storage is bad for you. Some tell you that harmful chemicals leach into your food during freezing and reheating. Other sources tell you that as long as it says "microwave-safe" you're fine. The jury is out on a definitive answer.

Still, the Mr and I have decided to play it safe and we're making the switch to glass food storage. Since I am cooking and freezing more foods, it make sense to use containers that transition better for reheating. Mr has been packing his lunch for work in an effort to eat healthier, which means I am not the only one trying to repurpose leftovers or make portable meals. Time to replenish the stock.

This is not revolutionary.  I am hardly the first person to say "hmm maybe all this plastic isn't as great as it first seems."  Pretty sure Grandma thought of it first.  After Mr CF read an article about make-ahead meals specifically meant to be layered into mason jars, I was sold. 

I decided to get glass containers instead of more plastic. It's heavier and more fragile, of course, but I've bought into the hype about plastic being dangerous, and I think it's worth it. After the initial investment, glass is just as convenient (or moreso, really).  One more consumer product that can be recycled, and one less that requires oil to produce. It doesn't take any extra effort to clean or store it, so the short and (potential) long term benefits are huge to me. Plus, it's actually cheaper. For $30, we are now 24 Mason jars and 6 Pyrex richer. That's $10 less than comparable sizes of microwave-safe Tupperware.

Call me a yuppy or a hippy or a band-wagoner, but I'm happy. Now if only I could break my plastic grocery bag habit!

Are you on Team Glass or Team Plastic?

Table manners.

Where's my plate, please?

On the Weigh: Two Weeks' Worth

 

Two week total: -4.4
Total: -12

BOOM.  That just happened.  Well, not by accident, of course, but it is really nice to have eliminated the gain from two weeks ago so succinctly, plus a bit of interest.  I like interest. 

That's the beauty of WW though, something I have to tell myself over and over sometimes.  This is not accidental.  Losing weight (or gaining) is a side effect of a series of actions and choices.  The scale only provides feedback about those choices.  It's great to remember that when you gain, but also when you lose.  I know exactly what I did right over the last few weeks, and I know I can repeat it.

It's fun to see the numbers go down - I mean who doesn't love that?  Right now, however, I am having so much fun with all those little things that the numbers don't reflect ...
... the size-smaller pair of pants I pulled on a whim from the Incentive Drawer
... the tall boots that zipped with no problem (that didn't last winter)
... the compliments that I keep getting from coworkers and friends
... the muscle definition I'm starting to see in my arms

And I just lost a daily point. Why does one point seem so big?

But it feels great, friends.  Yes, indeed.

#6 for Saturday.

You miss me when I'm gone, and it shows when I get home from out of town trips.

Five for Friday, vol 16

1.  I can take you to my high school reunion and you can talk to people like it's yours.  I don't think you know a stranger.

2.  My friends' husbands love you.

3.  You do laundry.  Alllllllll the laundry. 

4.  You're in a Fantasty Wall Street League.

5.  You think I'm a catch, and the fact that I can cook doesn't hurt either.

I love you!

Chicken and Cheese Stuffed Pasta Shells

It's been a long day.  Not bad at all, just ... long.  After some long days, all I want to do is get a Chipotle burrito bowl and pretend my stove is broken.  But sometimes cooking dinner helps.  It's orderly.  It's calming.  You get to eat when you're done.  Cooking is highly therapeutic for me, and today it was just what the doctor ordered, especially since what I ended up with was pure unadulterated comfort food.

Chicken and Cheese Stuffed Pasta Shells
1 box jumbo pasta shells
15 oz part skim ricotta cheese
8 oz low-fat cream cheese, softened
4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, diced and cooked
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
Garlic, Italian seasoning, red pepper flakes - to taste

Cream Sauce
1 cup fat free half and half
1/2 stick unsalted butter
1/2 cup grated Parmesan
garlic

Cook pasta according to package directions. Meanwhile, in a small bowl, beat the ricotta, cream cheese and bouillon until blended. Stir in chicken and Parmesan cheese. Drain shells; stuff with chicken mixture. Place in a shallow 9x13 baking dish coated with cooking spray. In a small saucepan, bring cream and butter to a boil. Whisk in 3 tablespoons cheese and parsley. Stir until cheese is melted. Pour over shells. Cover and bake at 350° for 25 minutes. Uncover; sprinkle with remaining cheese. Bake 5-10 minutes longer or until cheese is melted and filling is heated through. Adapted from Taste of Home

I'll gladly put in as many more long days as I need to if this dinner is my reward.  Considering that it's busy season with my job and the end is no where near right now, it's a good thing that this freezes and reheats well.

I could eat the whole pan, no lie. 

Positivity

Do you ever have days where you just bounce out of bed and know it's going to be a good day? That's how yesterday was for me. I could just feel it in my very bones.  I love days like that.

Great work out (555 calories burned, thankyouverymuchsir), good eats (scrambled egg quesadilla omnomnom), baby pictures from my bestie (OMG *squeeze*), and my favorite skirt.

Black tee: Target

Teal sweater: NY & Co

Grey kick-pleat skirt: Gap

Black tights: Target

Black booties: Betsy Johnson

Necklace: Target

I loooooooove tights season.  Can you tell?  I was amped.  I pretty much woke up with a smile on my face because it was the first day of getting to wear them.  Tights Opening Day, huzzah!  It's officially fall in St Louis!

And then I skipped to work, whistling a jaunty tune.

What is your favorite thing to wear for fall?

One more reason to like the Foo Fighters.

Or one more reason to dislike the Westboro Baptist protesters. Keep it clean!

Standing alone indeed.

Love you Blogger, but jeebus it should not be this difficult.  When I originally converted my old blog to the new URL, I did so to preserve my current Blogger friends and Reader subscribers.  It's taken a year to build up the readership I had, and I sincerely appreciated every single person that added or favorited the old blog.  But since Blogger is awesome, the conversion destroyed the RSS feed and it no longer automatically updates to Reader.  So I had to basically delete the entire blog formerly-known-as-MeaganLikesIt and start over, which was almost physically painful.  I had a moment a few weeks ago when I thought I might be done with blogging, that I might want to step away for awhile - but having to scrap it and start from scratch more than showed me that this is not something I want to give up anytime soon.  Now that I've probably lost every single subscriber and reader I had accumulated since launching my married lady blog, it's been highly frustrating to convert things over.  Worth it, but really stinking annoying. 

I really appreciate your patience and this is a reminder that you most likely have to resubscribe in Reader again to make the feed appear. 

www.thecheesefriesstandalone.com

Let's Fall in Love: We're just here for cake.

After toasts and dinner, Kenny and I had the very important task of cutting our cake.

In my life, I've seen a lot of cakes.  I've eaten a lot of cakes.  I've even made a lot of cakes.  But this was my first go at cutting into a four-tier pile of cake.  As it turns out, it's not as easy as it looks.

We have a beautiful cake cutting set that my mother in law gifted us at one of my bridal showers, and I was excited to use it.  We played Sugar Pie Honeybunch and quite literally hacked into that gorgeous cake.  It was not pretty.

The slices into the cake were not the hard part, but as soon as that mission was accomplished, we realized a flaw in the plan.  How do you get your newly minted slice of cake out from other the three tiers on top of it?  Kenny and I were muttering to each other about what the heck we were supposed to do now, and there were about a hundred sets of eyes watching us figure it out.

I feel like cake cutting is the first test of marriage.

So after a few minutes of struggling, which felt like eternity, we scooped a small wedge of cake onto a plate.  By the time we had it out, our little slice had completely fallen apart and it looked wholly unappetizing.  But we soldiered on.

Worth it.  It was totally amazing cake.  We went with devil's food cake with vanilla buttercream filling in two layers and white chocolate sponge cake with fudge ganache filling in the other.  We had sliced into the dark chocolate ... and it was awesome.

Yayyyyy cake!  If there's one thing we love, it's cake.

My mom was adament throughout the planning process that there should be no cake smashing when we did the cutting.  I 99% agreed with her.  I didn't want to get cake on my dress or start a food fight.  But surely a little boop on the nose with some buttercream never hurt anyone.

boooooooop.

And with that, cake was served!  The hotel wheeled it off to be sliced and Kenny and I went to take our first dance together. 

In case you missed it ...

I bought a dress and completely changed it.  We had a marathon final week of engagement.  I giggled my way through our rehearsal.  Kenny got grilled at our rehearsal dinner.  The groomsmen ran amok in downtown Springfield. The girls got gorgeous.  We exchanged mushy wedding-day gifts.  The guys got fancy and then got dancy.  I became a Bride.  There was a first First Look. I shared my Somethings.  The boys made the most of trolley-time. And did their thing on the Capital grounds. The girls took photos at the hotel. Everyone arrived at the church. We walked down the aisle. We declared our intentions and my cousin preached. We exchanged our vows. Our hands were blessed. Kenny put a ring on it and kissed his bride. We were pronounced Mr and Mrs! We left the church in a blizzard of confetti, and took a "just-married" trolley ride. We made it legal. We took pictures with our families, followed by wedding party portraits. I hit a low point. We received our guests. The wedding party was introduced. My Dad checked his toast off of his to-do list. Our Best Man and Maid of Honor shared toasts as well.

Testy.

This is a test post to see if Google Reader can see me, or if I am now invisible.

PS I hate Blogger.

Five for Friday, vol 15

1. You send me random and cute texts throughout the day.

2. When asked what you want for dinner, Chinese food is always the answer.

3. You're excited to attend MY high school reunion.

4. You think I make the best turkey-and-cheese sandwiches.

5. You notice the little things.

I love you.

Ch-ch-ch-changes.

So you might notice some changes on the ol bloggeroo here.  Hopefully everything updates automatically in your Google readers, but I have made the decision to switch some things up in terms of my URL and title.  It was brought to my attention (thanks Emily) that there was a store with, erm, adultish inventory with a website strikingly similar to mine.  Uncomfortably similar.  "Oops I just clicked onto a sex toy website at work" similar. 

So I made the executive decision to scootch on away from that particular URL.  I hope you understand.

Everything will be updated and scootched by the end of the weekend, so the new address is The Cheesefries Stand Alone. 

Thanks!

Pardon me.

Why are you laying in bed?

When you could be playing with ME!

Ten Years and a Thousand Miles Away

I wasn't going to write a 9/11 post.  There have been so many already, and I feel that most are much more personal and poignant than I could hope to be.  I wasn't even sure if I was going to watch the coverage today, but here I am, glued to the TV.  I can't believe it's been ten years.  Watching it all over, it takes you right back to where you were, a terrifying timewarp.  My hands are shaking and I feel like I could cry at any moment, just like 10 years ago.

I don't have a "story," really.  I was sleeping in on Tuesday morning September 11, 2001 in a salmon pink dorm room in a Midwestern college town a thousand miles away from New York City.  I was skipping class, actually, having been up late the night before breaking up with my then-boyfriend.  As my 8:00AM central time alarm went off and I pulled my self-involved 18-year old self out of my top bunk, my roommate Casey came back into the room.  She was on her cell phone with her mother, whose hysterical tone could be heard across the room.  We turned on our small TV just in time to see the second plane hit the Trade Center. 
A thousand miles away from Ground Zero, two teenage girls held hands and cried as we watched the story unfold, watched the realization spread that this was not an accident, and sat helplessly as it got so much worse.

A thousand miles away, I called my parents and my sister.  My mother, a state worker in Illinois' capital at the time, was being evacuated, following protocol for all government offices across the country.  A few friends from other rooms in the dorm began to gather in our room.  We spent the next several hours in near silence, huddled together, watching buildings and life as we knew it collapse.  As freshman in college, we were old enough to know what was happening and that nothing would be the same for us again.  Some people have called the attacks the end of innocence in America, and thinking back to how it felt that day, I would agree.

A thousand miles away, Missouri's campus was quiet.  People walked to class in a daze.  Professors either canceled class, wheeled out televisions to watch the news, or didn't show up at all.  I didn't leave my dorm until the late afternoon to go to Poli Sci, only to be turned away when my professor told us to go home.

I understand why New Yorkers feel 9/11 more than others.  I don't think any one person or city can take ownership of a tragedy like this, but at the same time, I understand it.  A thousand miles away, a mass of young people watched the disaster unfold in disbelief and terror.  It brings tears to my eyes to this day. It's still nearly impossible to reconcile the images from that morning with the reality of the devastation and loss. I cannot imagine what it was like to be just a few blocks away, to be in the heart of Ground Zero ... to be in one of the buildings.  I just can't wrap my head around it.

What I can say is this, no matter where we were on that morning, the events of September 11 brought us together.  A thousand miles away, there was an overwhelming sense of unity for myself and my fellow students on campus, albeit one tinged with fear.  Everyone felt it, everyone looked around and noted where they were and what they were doing, because even then we knew that we would be talking about this for a long, long time.  The impact has obviously been far-reaching and deeply significant to our history, our politics, our culture.  It's not the same for us as it was for the people of New York and Washington, but I don't think I will ever forget the feel of thousands of students taking a collective breath and joining together.  By the end of the day, there were American flags hanging out of dorm windows, pinned onto backpacks, flying in front of Greek houses.  A make-shift memorial of flowers, candles, letters, and flags collected in front of Mizzou's Columns on the quad.  The fear and anxiety I felt that day was not the same as those closer to the events, but I will never forget it.  Nor will I ever forget the sense of unity that emerged almost immediately after.  A thousand miles away, this marked all of us, brought us together, and more than anything else, provided a sense of hope.  Ten years later, I still feel it.  It is absolutely overwhelming.

The first few days after September 11, 2001 felt like the world had stopped turning.  But that's the point of terrorism, isn't it?  To bring us to our knees, both physically and psychologically.  A thousand miles away from Ground Zero, things ground to a halt, and ever so slowly picked back up again.  There were tests, football games, parties ... life resumed in what would become the new normal.  We did the same things that college kids did before, but now with eyes wide open.  Maybe there was more fear, more discussion, more compassion, more more flags. I know I found myself taking more time to appreciate what I had, that my life was on the surface unscathed, that my loved ones, my immediate world, my people were intact.  I can't say that I had ever felt patriotic before 9/11, but I learned so much about the American spirit in the days following the attacks at the Trade Center, and I was so proud to be an American citizen in the following days.  We are resolute, we are brave, and we are strong.  We pause to remember, we come together in times of fear, we find hope in dark days.

It's been ten long years, but looking back, it feels like just moments.  I can't even imagine what it feels like to those who lost loved ones, colleagues, family, and friends that morning.  Many people have said so today, but it bears repeating that today is a time to remember every single one of the nearly three thousand lives lost, as well as how they all touched the rest of us ... even a thousand miles away.

Never forget.

On the Weigh: Guess What Happened

WI: +2.8

I can't say that I am surprised.  To be honest, I was expecting it to be much worse.  I behaved basically the opposite of every good WW habit I have learned, so is it really that shocking to gain weight from it?  It was a big step for me to go to the meeting anyway - my natural inclination is to avoid the whole thing entirely.  But the weeks you want to go the least are the ones you really need it the most.

It's frustrating that one bad week can result in undoing weeks of work, and it might take a month for me to lose it again.  It sucks, but what choice do I have but to treat today as a fresh start and move forward.  The meeting topic was all about back to basics, and it could not have come at a better time for me.  More often than not, the meeting topics seem to be chosen specifically for what I am struggling with most.  It's almost like WW knows what they're doing or something. 

How was your week?

Five for Friday, vol 14

1.  You can tell by my tone of voice when I want something.

2.  You think Nacho is a great name for a baby.

3.  You think iphone text whale is just as funny as I do, but that iphone text shark is even better.

4.  You ask me every time how I want my pineapple diced, even though my answer is always the same.

5.  Your side of the bed looks like a pillow fort.

I love you.

Happy Football Season

What If Everything Worked Like BCS: The Spelling Bee from sanjeev tandle on Vimeo.

It's all fun and games now.  Ask me again in December.

Back on track.

This is about how I feel right now.

In case you couldn't tell from my anniversary photo recap, I ate everything this weekend.  Yes, everything.  I have major food hangover and it's making me cranky.

But what can you do but move forward?  No, I did not make the best choices over the long weekend, and I definitely let the specialness of the occasion get the best of me.  I'm not proud that I ate my face off, but I can't change it.  I am reconciled to the fact that I will likely gain at my meeting this weekend, but you can damn well be sure that I will be there anyway.  I hate seeing the numbers go up, but that's usually when you need it most.

In the meantime, I am still struggling a bit, but focused on forward motion.  Persistence, not perfection. Why is it so hard to get back on track?  I have made so many strides towards building healthy habits, but it feels like they can fall apart so quickly.  It's cheesy as all hell, but I just keep telling myself that it's a new day.  I might be in the hole on flex points (like a lot) but today is a clean slate.  I'm reminding myself over and over that a bad weekend doesn't mean throwing the towel in for the rest of the week.  Yesterday was hard.  Today is still hard, but slightly less so.  Tomorrow will be a little better.  One foot in front of the other, right?

At least I can say that I am making a concerted effort, regardless of the feedback I will get from the scale.

I went to bootcamp (and it hurt and it sucked and I wanted to sleep, but I went).
I planned and tracked my meals.
I am drinking a TON of water.
I went to the grocery yesterday and our house is officially cake-free.

I'm settling back into normal.  And isn't that the best part?  The junk-filled bingey weekend USED to be the status quo, but not anymore.  Maybe those good habits aren't as fragile as I thought.

How do you get back on track after a rough spot?

Anniversary Weekend, in photos

Why you leave me?

The Cheesefries stand alone.

Made Mr take my cheesy mirror photo with me before our schmance Tenderloin Room dinner.

So. Much. Cake.

Wheeeeeeeee!

The perfect ending...