May 5 - Gnome Home Garden

May 5 garden tour at the gnome home

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.

day 2 at the beach in st. croix

things that are different in st. croix in december (as compared to the northeast of USA where i've spent all of my life):
-it's not cold
-there are mosquitos at night, and no-see-ums at sunset on the beach. i'm covered in bites!
-the only snowmen are blow-up dolls (yet still on people's lawns)
-on the radio, you get wished a "brown christmas" in a west-indian accent

okay, that's it for now. more photos tomorrow!

day 1 at the beach in st. croix

sometimes people ask me why i keep the daily temperature & weather forecast for St. Croix, USVI on my blog. well, to make a long story short i have a little gig down here where i come twice a year to lead services and teach.

when i left nyc this past fri, it was 20 degrees F, but with the windchill it was ZERO. very very cold. the coldest day yet! my host family is the one i first stayed with last october, EH and CF. three dogs and one sweet cat. seriously it surprises me how much i love cats. i just love 'em!

best things about st. croix: warm air, beautiful ocean views, fresh fruit, local beer. oh, and EVERYONE says "good afternoon" in addition to good morning and good night (as a greeting). freakishly polite, in a good way.

worst things about st. croix: MOSQUITOES. NO SEE-UMS. why must the small bugs constantly eat me up? why must i sleep with a mosquito net yet still have something buzz by my face at 4 in the morning? also, i wish i had some friends to hang out with here. the community is super sweet, but if i could just afford to bring a few friends along, it would be really great to have people to hang out with after 9pm. who wants to come in april?

okay, photos.

PICTURE #1: this is me on a chair at the beach. notice my camping pillow keeping my neck comfy. (love thermarest!) if you look closely you can see the trunk of a palm tree. eventually the shade from this spot was making me a bit chilly, so i moved to an area with more direct sunlight.

PICTURE #2: here are my toes. this is the view directly in front of where i'm sitting. again, gorgeous view -- yet, who to share it with? if you answered harry potter, the new yorker, an iced coffee, and jane magazine, then you'd be correct.

PICTURE #3: general ocean view, this time without the toes. notice the palm trees. my favorite!!

cute frogginess and bagel rant

here's a photo of rafael's recent visit to nyc. i just got back from lexington where i was visiting with my famiy since tuesday.

for some reason, i'm telling myself that i'm on a health-food kick. the weekend before i left for boston, i was inundated with bagels and pizza. i found myself eating one, two, even three bagels per day...day after day! i'm honestly not a huge calorie freak, but one bagel a day for three days in a row, that's just too much. i once read that eating a bagel is the equivalent of eating five slices of bread! considering i rarely eat white flour bread but almost always eat white flour bagels, it's just whack for me to have a whole bagel ever, let alone many bagels day after day. yes of course i love bagels -- but a girls' gotta have a limit.

the good news is that my roommate and i just cleaned out our refrigerator. therefore, we are starting with a minimal amount of everything. i'm not in a place yet of cutting any one thing out of my diet; rather, i plan to go back to my plan from last year: two meals a day that are particularly healthy, with a third meal of whatever i want. for examle, yogurt smoothie for breakfast, pizza for lunch, and quinoa, veggies & tofu for dinner. with that, i also plan to keep going to the gym 3 days a week, and hopefully hit 4 or 5 days.

somehow now that it's in writing, it seems more official. next week: MORE FRUIT.

when i got home tonight, i made a huge pot of quinoa, kale and tofu that i divided into 5 servings, some for this week and the rest for the freezer. my roommate and i also made a huge pot of 13 bean soup with vegetarian beef broth, onion soup mix, and carrots & celery. definitely on our way. am i too proud of myself?

jenny, be the water!

had a traditional nyc afternoon/evening outing with jr from toronto. we attemped to get standby tickets for the daily show and colbert report, then grabbed schwarma and ate it on a pier overlooking the hudson river. we then proceeded to take some silly photos with jenny, a 0.5 inch plastic naked baby doll:





it was a hilarious photo shoot to say the least. if i were to try to explain the further levels of silliness you'd think i'm nuts, so just trust me on this one...

love + love = love

when two beautiful people that you love announce that they are ready to announce their love to the world for the rest of their lives, you walk around smiling so hard that your face hurts. you scream at the top of your lungs and jump up and down at a random gas station in upstate ny. you wish ruby-k and knucklehead the BIGGEST MAZAL TOV YOU CAN WISH!

DELICIOUS: The Zeek food issue launch event (Thu. Oct. 26)

Take the 1/2/3 train to 72 & b'way and you're there. Don't forget to sign up in advance and mention Zeek, or bring a printout of this listing to the event to get in for $5 (instead of $8). Hope you can make it!

9/11/06 and the Jewish Music Awards

Last night (the 5th anneversary of 9/11) I attended the Jewish Music Awards in Battery Park City at the Museum of Jewish Heritage. It was certainly a strange co-mingling of people, performers, and anneversaries. Here are some photos to help sum up the evening:

This is a crew of us posing with comedian Jackie Hoffman. From left to right:
The Last Trumpet, Josh Frankel, Esther, Jackie, and me:


more trumpet, mobius, shana, the jewish robot, me, and brigitta from budapest:

visiting yd on gan chava v'adam

for a few hours on a sweltering hot afternoon, ab & i made it up to modi'in to check out the site of the Jewish farming school's summer fellowship, Shorashim.

sarah writes some rhymes

last night i went out to daila for my first ever Corner Prophets event. after a few poets went up to perform, mobius lead us in an exercise in which he gave us three key words and a topic (orange, mediocre, sullen, and immigration) and each person then wrote something which he or she then performed. everyone had a great time chilling out, creating art, and supporting each other. check out the site to see the rhymes we made up.

dj mobius at yellow submarine

on mon. night after the conference, Ab and I came back from tel aviv in time to make it to a crazy party with a fabulous band, a rockin dj, and some random female poets. this photo was taken with my camera, but by the world famous Kitra Cahana:

the beach in tel aviv with EK and AB

jewish bloggers unite!

the beautiful people in this photo represent, roughly from left to right:
Jewlicious, Judapest, Jewschool, Shabot, The View from Here, and Blogs of Zion



here are some photos from the final night banquet of the conference: