Things That Made Me Happy Last Week, Week One-Hundred-Fifty-Eight

[glenniebun]

• The one super-obvious thing is, of course, the US House's set of votes on health insurance reform last night. Even though the bills they passed (one of which, By the Beard of Zeus, still has to go back through the Senate, though there're still some good things that're happening regardless) aren't as progressive as they should've been, including a mandate in the absence of a public option and requiring the President to go on record as hating women to get through legislative blocks, Nancy Pelosi still proved me wrong by managing to get a deal for the fixes to the Senate bill, so bravo for her.
  I feel quite a bit like I did on election night and inauguration day: this is a huge step and a sign of hope. Now the activists have to make them make it better. (Say it with me: nobody is seriously saying this is it, the matter is closed, forever and ever amen. Social Security and Medicare both took years to become the great programs they are, and could still use fixes in some areas. These things happen achingly slowly. Phew.)
• St. Patrick's Day means one thing: my mom's corned beef with fresh mustard on rye. Utter bliss.
• Additional Housing Update: I'm getting to the point where once I take the stacks of boxes filling my foyer, stick them in my mom's truck and bring them to Scott's apartment, the foyer doesn't fill up again immediately after I get home. This is a very good sign, even though I've not yet taken much from upstairs.
• This Week's Adventures in Cooking: I've wanted to try my hand at huevos rancheros ever since seeing this recipe last month, and when I spied some small tortillas last week I couldn't resist. They turned out...good, and certainly tasty, but pretty far from what we'd call "anything approaching traditional Tex-Mex." (Also, you probably already know that I didn't do the fresh-homemade salsa bit.) On one of my attempts I let the tortilla sit too long with the egg on top of it in the attempt to cook the egg more, avoiding a big mess when I tried to flip it over, but in reality all I did was overcook the bottom side of the tortilla until it more closely resembled a big cracker. So I buttered that side to get rid of some of the burned flavor and voilà, I had a six-inch-diameter buttery cracker with an egg and cheese on top, so it didn't exactly turn out poorly.