Today, I got a random email from my sister.  I say random because right now she is on a vacation in Mexico with her fiance, so we didn’t expect to hear from her for another week or so.  And the gist of this email was…  she and her fiance are changing the date of their wedding from their planned date of November 2010 to OCTOBER 2009!!!

Yes… that is in one month.  And, they are going to do it in Hershey, PA on October 10th.  Which, in case you forgot, is the exact day I leave for Switzerland. Are you kidding me?  So now I have to choose between a rare overseas trip that I have had planned for months and my own sister’s wedding.  I’m not sure what I’m going to do yet, but here’s one main consideration point:  My sister changes her mind every second.  No plan is ever “solid” with her… she will literally decide to do something else 5 minutes before she is supposed to do it.  So I’m afraid that if I change my plans, if I pay a lot of money to cancel or alter my trip to Switzerland, she will then go and change her mind and not get married on the 10th or not get married in Hershey or something.  And then I will go CRAZY.

There is other drama surrounding this marriage too – suffice to say that nobody’s very excited about it at all.  In reality, it is probably better if they do have a small, simple wedding – less drama (which they don’t need), less money (which they don’t have.)  But it is kind of sad, especially for my sister who I know has always wanted a big wedding with a Cinderella dress, etc.  She is only barely 24 years old… I don’t know what the rush is.

So that’s the daily dilemma, I’m going to have to talk to the rest of my family about it (and S) and decide what to do.   And if I do change my trip to Switzerland and go a little later, S can’t change his because he has exams for school the first week we are there – he absolutely has to be there the week of the 10th.  So if I do change anything, I will be on my own.

Lunch was a turkey salad.  Hey, at least I’m consistent.

Snacks were cereal:

And a cold treat of Arctic Zero vanilla ice cream, strawberries, and a crumbled Kashi crunchy TLC bar:

The vanilla Arctic Zero is growing on me.  For some reason it tastes better to me today than it did yesterday, and it really tastes good when I add in fruit and some crunchies!  So I am happy again   I still prefer the chocolate and chocolate peanut butter, but I will manage to force the vanilla down for sure

For dinner, I made S potato salad as a side.  He has really been wanting potato salad – but it is a tough thing for me to make because I have never in my life eaten potato salad.  I know, crazy.  But I don’t like potatoes (except for sweet potatoes) and I don’t like mayonnaise… so that pretty much eliminates the two main ingredients, right?  So I was kind of making it up as I went along.  I looked at a few recipes online to get a basic concept, and then just threw things together.  I barely even tasted it to see if it was ok, because I don’t like it to begin with so it always wouldn’t really taste good to me.  S loved the final result, although he said the potatoes were usually sliced (I cut them more into cubes… that’s how I had always seen potato salad…) so I’ll try that next time.  He at half for dinner and will take the other half for lunch tomorrow:

Potato Salad a la Rachel-who-has-never-eaten-it-before

8 red potatoes

1 cup mayonnaise

4 hard boiled eggs

1 tablespoon vinegar

1 tablespoon mustard

1 teaspoon sugar

2 teaspoons paprika

sprinkle of basil

salt and pepper to taste

1/2 cup chopped celery

1/2 cup chopped onions

*I wanted to add some dill too… but didn’t have any.  So it was dill-less.

Cut the potatoes into cubes (note to self:  S likes slices better) and boiled them for about 8 minutes.  Put them aside to cool.  In another bowl, mix mayonnaise and spices.  Add chopped hard boiled eggs to the mix.  Once potatoes are cool, mix mayonnaise mixture into potatoes.  Add celery and onions and mix.  Let sit in the fridge – the longer the better.  I think this is one of those recipes that tastes good right away, but tastes better the next day…

Dinner for me was chopped veggies and hummus, grilled salmon, and egg whites with laughing cow cheese.  I made the salmon on the george foreman grill (because I was making the rest of S’s dinner in the toaster oven), and was not impressed.  It was really tough.  Does anybody have suggestions about how to make salmon taste good on the George Foreman?

And some strawberries on the side:

And dessert was some chocolate fudge brownie ice cream:

And I just had my final snack for the night – some of my Swiss chocolate stash (what you see pictured here x 2….)

Now it’s off to bed to dream of why my sister could possibly be in such a hurry to get married.  I close with a picture I just took of the two loves of my life: