Wednesday, November 26, 2008


Family ...
Originally uploaded by Rachel Houghton
I was inspired by a scraplift challenge at The Digi Chick to do this layout. When I went to D.C., I visited my sister in Virginia. My cousin (and her two kids) and my aunt came over to see me as well. It had been 7 years since I'd seen my aunt, 4 since I'd seen my cousin, and I think it may have been 20 years since all of us (the adults) had been in the same room at the same time.

You can see the original layout I was inspired by here:

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Monday was a good day!

In addition to seeing a (country) rockin' concert with both Little Big Town (current song: Fine Line) and Carrie Underwood (current song: Just a Dream), I was also the Monday Member Spotlight at the Digi Chick.

You can find out just a little bit about me here: http://www.thedigichick.com/blog/wordpress/?p=513

Sunday, November 16, 2008

Mountains at 35000 Feet

A photo from the airplane today. Gorgeous mountains, eh?

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Japanese Garden Lower Pond

I met up with two of my former coworkers today. We had lunch at the Spaghetti Factory, then two of us went to the Japanese Gardens. It was free admission day, and we both brought canned food donations for the Oregon Food Bank.

This is one of the gorgeous sights I saw while at the Gardens. It was hard choosing which photos to upload to Flickr, but this is the best one of the lot.

You can see the rest here

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rhoughton/sets/72157608911872687/

Monday, November 10, 2008

I have applied to two more jobs - one late last night, one early this morning. That makes three jobs applied for so far!

I've discovered an interesting side effect of unemployment - no snoozing required! I haven't managed to oversleep or snooze my alarm since Thursday. A friend tells me that's because even if I don't acknowledge it, I'm stressed out and worried.

Wish me good luck in meeting with the recruiter. It doesn't look like there are many jobs in our area, but I have faith I'll find something!

Sunday, November 09, 2008

I have an appointment on Monday with a recruiter, I've submitted my resume to at least one direct hire opening at a local company, and I'm shaking my network for leads. I'm hoping it won't take long, because things will get really lean money wise with half my husband's check going to our mortgage payment (we can survive, but it will be bare bones, we won't be out on the street by any means).

Saturday, November 08, 2008

Waves at Tolovana Beach Wayside

This is what I saw today at Cannon Beach. We went down there for the day, just to get away from it all. This weekend is part of the Stormy Weather Arts Festival. Normally we would have stayed the night, but left it too late to get a hotel room. Plus it was very rainy and windy, so we decided to head home before it got dark.

I used a Lightroom preset from Andie Smith at Pink Ink Studios (A1A) to make the waves stand out and vignette the corners.

Thursday, November 06, 2008

I'm still in shock...

I was laid off today, with about 16 other people in my office. Total shock. I was packed and out in under an hour. Then I went to lunch with three other folks who also got laid off, and we chatted for about an hour and a half.

I've been home mostly since then, emailing contacts, finding my resume, encouraging some other folks (us technologically savvy folks who have IM and such), filing for unemployment, and wondering how Christmas is going to get taken care of this year.

Tomorrow, I have an early morning conference call to review conference proposals. After that, I think I'll head to the library and get some books. My husband would also like me to figure out our budget and where we can "cut" out extraneous stuff.

I'm hoping I'm not unemployed for long.

If you know of a technical writing job in the Portland area, let me know! :)

Saturday, November 01, 2008

Bird in Flight

One of my favorite photography subjects: bird(s) in flight.

I did this for a layout challenge at a scrapbook site.