Here's what you could do with $700,000,000,000 (from jbreazeale, from dihard):

• Give every person in the US $2,300 or give every household $6,200. (Think about it another way: this will cost each person in the US $2,300.)
  
• Pay the income taxes of every American who makes $500,000 or less a year.
• Fully fund the Defense, Treasure, Education, State Veterans Affairs and Interior departments next year, as well as NASA.
• Buy gasoline for every car in the US for 16 months.
• Buy every NFL, NBA, and MLB team and build each one a new stadium - and pay your players $191 million each for a year
• Create the 17th largest economy in the world - roughly equal to that of the Netherlands.
• Or you could pay off just 7% of the $9.8 trillion national debt

But to hear about half of Washington D.C. and most of the people I've heard on the radio talk, instead we MUST buy a bunch of bad debt with it RIGHT NOW OR THE SKY WILL FALL IN ON OUR HEADS!

I wonder what you think of Dave Ramsey's so-called "Common Sense Fix"? It certainly sounds like a better idea than what was defeated in the House yesterday.

I have never done a meme in Blogger before, but I was tagged by Mile Hi Mama, so how could I refuse?

1. Were you married at the time? Yes

2. What were your reactions when you found out you were pregnant? My first child was quite deliberately adopted, so there was no moment when we first "found out" we would have a child. But there was a moment when our child went from being a "theoretical baby" to an "actual baby," when we got a referral with a photo, a name, and a history. Those who know me in person know that I am usually reserved, but I recall hugging my usually hands-off co-workers.

3. How old were you? 27

4. How did you find out you were pregnant? When we got the referral, I was at work, where the agency called me. I was helping a new employee get situated, so I wasn't at my desk, and they paged me overhead, which was pretty unusual. But it was an unusual phone call.

5. Who did you tell first? Probably whatever co-worker was standing next to me

6. Did you want to find out the sex? Keeping this a secret was not an option. We had to choose at the get-go. We said "either," so they put us on the boy list because it was shorter.

7. Due date: Once we got the referral, we knew the arrival would be several months later, but had no information beyond that. They were a tense few months, during which every phone call made us wonder if we would be heading to the airport soon.

8. Did you deliver your child early or late? We missed the Chinese New Year, during which our child's home country essentially closes down for a month. So I would say "late."

9. Did you have morning sickness? No.

10. What did you crave? Same old things. The advantage to doing it my way is that I got to keep drinking alcohol throughout the whole "pregnancy."

11. Who irritated you the most? Internet trolls.

12. What was your first child's sex? Male. Still is.

13. How many pounds did you gain throughout the pregnancy? I maintained a svelte figure the whole time!

14. Did you have any complications during your pregnancy? The whole process of adoption is complicated to begin with. We had to get fingerprinted by two different agencies and get visas from two different governments. We had to have a home study and almost needed a follow-up home study (expensive) because the delay was so long, the original one nearly expired. We had to undergo 20 hours of special training to be adoptive parents. There were more complications after arrival, including a misspelled birth certificate, a lost passport, and a three-year delay in getting a Social Security card.

15. Where did you give birth? The municipal airport

16. How many hours were you in labor? I can't even remember how long it was between the plane's scheduled arrival and the time the escort brought our child to us. It seemed like it was over an hour, but maybe it was less. Between the referral and arrival dates, five very long months. The total time from our first talk with the agency to arrival was just under 14 months.

17. Who drove you to the hospital? I don't remember who drove to the airport.

18. Who watched? My extended family.

19. Was it vaginal or c-section? Aviational.

20. Did you take medicine to ease the pain? Ah, no.

21. How much did your child weigh? 18 pounds. Now that's a big firstborn!

22. What did you name him/her? His first name is after a contemporary saint, one middle name is shared with his adoptive father and grandfather, and the other middle name is his birth surname.

23. How old is your first child today? Four

I tag Kimberly, Tammy, Katie, Susan, and Anna. And anyone else who may happen to read this post and who wants to participate. Leave a comment to link to your answers!

In the area of northwest Houston and Spring where we live, enormous 100-foot Loblolly pines were snapped in two. Limbs the size of whole trees were scattered about.

Every yard was littered with fresh green tree limbs and branches. One neighbor's gutter was ripped off; another's ceiling collapsed after the roof sprung a leak; and a third had a huge limb fall on it, opening a large hole in the roof. We lost a single panel of trellis fencing, so I am considering us very lucky.

Our neighborhood has no power and our street is typically the last to have power restored when there is an outage. After hearing quotes ranging from two to four weeks for electricity restoration, we migrated to my sister Milehimama's house, also in the Houston area. Hers is a newer neighborhood with underground power lines and they have had electricity since earlier today.

Countless fences are down. But in northwest Houston, the damage is far less than that experienced by those on Galveston Island and the Bolivar Peninsula. Some in the news media are making loud noises about not being allowed to see West Galveston or the Bolivar Peninsula. Bolivar was completely submerged by storm surge. The official death toll according to the TV news is nine in Texas, but that will doubtless rise.

Thanks be to God, we are all safe.

We lost power in pretty short order Friday night. Our house still needs power but we made it to my sister's house, which does have power. I only have a moment to update but will add more later — stay tuned!

Live blogging Hurricane Ike continues. The outer eye wall is approaching the coast and should make landfall in a few hours. Here in northwest Houston, perhaps 50 miles inland, the wind is not yet intense. The effect is eerie, tree limbs waving against a dark sky. Sustained winds of 75-110 are expected right here from midnight until the early morning hours.

Eyewitness 13 news has their poor sports reporter out in the field. I imagine the most dangerous thing he expected to experience in his job was a flying baseball. Actually, flying objects are currently the most dangerous thing for him.

Chambers County, located east of Houston, is expected to be entirely inundated. Galveston Island, Port Bolivar and the Bolivar Peninsula, and High Island will experience sustained winds from 100-120 mph, and gusting hurricane force winds are reported from Galveston right now.

I will be keeping this up as long as I can. You can subscribe to make sure you get updates immediately. Over a million people are anticipated to lose power before this is over.

Winds outside are ranging around 41-46 mph, according to the news.

This storm is flirting with Category 3, but the storm surge will be that of a Category 4 or Category 5 storm.

The eye is very wide, about 60 miles across. If the eye narrows, the winds in the eye wall will become much faster due to the conservation of momentum. Let's hope the eye stays large!

I wish so, so badly that we had had an opportunity to make plywood shutters. The windows are all taped so that in case of damage, flying glass will be lessened.

Our older child doesn't know what a hurricane is, but he is excited and doesn't want to go to bed. Our younger child is still a baby. The animals are spooked, but that could be attributed to the fact that a new kitten joined our household this week.

I took this video to show the wind intensity in northwest Houston about 7:00 p.m. This is the amount of wind you would expect from a run-of-the-mill thunderstorm. Hurricane force winds are yet to come, but will be here overnight so I won't be able to film them (even though we have unboarded windows).