distilled vinegar is my friend!

so after almost a year of not blogging i suddenly feel the urge again. somehow with facebook as a place i can post regular updates, it doesn't quite seem to make sense that i should also be posting updates here. now with mirrorblog app, i can post here and it still shows up on facebook. yay!

i just have to share the most amazing experience of my afternoon. for over a week my espresso machine, probably my best friend in my apt besides my laptop and my bed, hasn't quite been working. while some people might think to throw it away and get a new one, i was determined to find a way to fix it myself.

after a bit of searching, i found some instructions for 'descaling.' basically, i poured white distilled vinegar into the top of the machine (where the water usually goes) and turned it on (without coffee in the filter basket). you would not believe the disgusting grime that came out! the vinegar was light brown and had all kinds of yucky gunk, not just coffee grains.

as it turns out,there's still something wrong with it...but it's good to know there's an easy way to clean it!

shabbat shalom.

a taste of israel

hi there loyal shamir*power readers. here is a sampling of my visit in israel so far. purim photos will be up later this week!

you can see me with NK hiking in ein gedi, me reading on the beach, and floating on the dead sea with NK.

Hair and Hoods

Bridge by the Libra Project

Check out The Libra Project's first music video, featuring my sister Rakia and Rafael:

Exposing Misleading Anti-Choice Fake Abortion Clinics

I was terrified and appreciative when the premiere season of the L-word had a scene on fake abortion clinics. Basically, a woman comes in to have an abortion, but instead of being counseled and having the operation, she is harassed and told why she shouldn't have one. See the clip from the L-Word here. Below is an excerpt from a recent article of the real life side of the issue.

According to a recent Planned Parenthood email, a 17-year-old girl mistakenly walked into a crisis pregnancy center thinking it was Planned Parenthood, which was next door. "The group took down the girl's confidential personal information and told her to come back for her appointment, which they said would be in their 'other office' (the real Planned Parenthood office nearby)."

When she showed up for her nonexistent appointment, she was met by the police, who had been erroneously tipped that a minor was being forced to abort. The crisis pregnancy center staff followed up this harassment by staking out the girl's house, phoning her father at work, and even talking to her classmates about her pregnancy, urging them to harass her.

I contacted Jennifer Jorczak of Planned Parenthood of Indiana to verify this story, and while she was unable to provide details out of respect for the patient's privacy, she confirmed that everything in the initial action alert email was true.

This humiliating and frustrating experience seems, by all accounts, to await more American women in the near future. And the best part? It's funded by your tax dollars.

Full story

(h/t to cole at Jvoices)

bostonians talk like midwest

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Midland   "You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have an accent." You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio.
Boston
The West
North Central
Philadelphia
The Northeast
The Inland North
The South
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

(h/t to mobius for the link. yay more encouragement for started to record podcasts!)

we could be sisters, no?

tonight i has a surprise night on the town (read: shamir-style...west village and union square) with the ever glamorous KC (pictured above with me at a party this past july in j'lem). we grabbed dinner at an old favorite of mine, Panchito's Mexican Restaurant.

i can't lie; i'm pretty sure it was my first time that i went there and didn't have an alcoholic drink. it was actually one of the first places i ever had a drink out at a restaurant -- in oct. of my junior year of college i came to nyc for the weekend and met some friends there for dinner. it was a few months before i turned 21 and they didn't card. wahoo! i've been there a few times since, including the night in may 2005 i went to see Mysterious Skin (our first Joseph Gordon-Levitt movie) with AB (this summer we saw Brick at the j'lem film festival).

anyway, i'm not at all trying to imply that the lack of alcohol had anything to do with my disappointment in the food, however, i was not as impressed with the food as i have been in the past. the salsa was watery. we were seated in a corner and we were forgotten about many times. our waitress didn't ask if we wanted drinks even once; after we ate some salsa&chips and our order finally came, then we asked for water which she brought. we also had to ask for forks and knives after our meals came.

i splurged and ordered jalepeno poppers in additon to a huge veggie burrio. poppers are one of those semi gross deep friend foods that i've only recently started to like. (they are quite spicy but the cheesiness wins out!) sadly, despite the menu description of plenty of hot cheese, the poppers merely contained a small blob of solid ambiguous white cheese. that was not worth eating something super spicy and crazy deep fried. the $7.95 burrito was decent, but spicy for no reason and way too many beans. at the end of the day, the real issue is that it wasn't as yummy as my regular order from burritoville, lost in austin, which is $6.99. will i ever enjoy mexican food again beyond burritoville?

the waitress did check on us once during the meal; however, we had to track her down in order to get the check after much waiting.

all in all (forgive me for using inexcusable redudant phrase), it was a lovely evening. we took a walk up to union square and enjoyed a cool evening that still wasn't bone-chillingly-freezing.