Sixteen weeks!

That's how long it has been since I started Weight Watchers again. In that amount of time, I've lost 9.0 lbs (almost the equivalent of a 10 lb bag of potatoes), gone down almost 2 pant sizes (and am mostly in the non "plus" section), reduced 1 cup/band size, and I've switched from Flex to Core.

I have to remind myself that weight loss is a slow and steady race. Nothing but the way I eat, portion control, and exercise is going to help this weight come off.

I've been very strict about my food and drink intake at home while I'm job searching. Unless it's a meal time, I can only get water or kool aid with splenda when I go into the kitchen - no snacks. It might be harder to do if I only had a one-level home, but I can spend most of my time upstairs and forget the kitchen is there unless I'm hungry or thirsty.

Let's Say Thanks!

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:

Monday was a good day!

Carrie Underwood Little Big Town Concert (1 of 24)
Originally uploaded by Rachel Houghton

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

Mountains at 35000 Feet

Mountains at 35000 Feet
Originally uploaded by Rachel Houghton

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

Japanese Garden Lower Pond

Japanese Garden Lower Pond
Originally uploaded by Rachel Houghton

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/

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!

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).

Waves at Tolovana Beach Wayside

Waves at Tolovana Beach Wayside
Originally uploaded by Rachel Houghton

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.

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! :)

Bird in Flight

SundaeChallenge_BirdInFlight
Originally uploaded by Rachel Houghton

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

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

Tree on Photowalk

Tree on Photowalk
Originally uploaded by Rachel Houghton

Here's a photo I took last week in Portland. I'm betting that tomorrow the leaves won't be quite as green...just in the past few days the leaves have started turning gorgeous brilliant red, orange, and yellow!

Well, that was productive...NOT!

Turns out, our friendly tax assessor deemed our house "not 100% complete" when he drove by on 1/1/07, so our house was "not 100% assessed in taxes."

That's governmentese for "you got a break last year on paying your taxes lady, and be lucky we can't retroactively go back and get more money from you!"

This year, on 1/1/08, the assessor deemed our house 100% complete, so we were "fully assessed" - which resulted in a 45% (or so) raise in our MAV (maximum assessed value). How did they work that magic? :) See, Oregon has a law that property taxes can only raise 3% per year - but there are "Property Event Exceptions" (read: loopholes) that allow counties to do stuff like what they did to us.

If it is any consolation, from this year on we'll only see 3% per year. Unfortunately, now our mortgage payment will change (read: go up).

Sigh. Can't win - and I feel extremely lucky that there is no legal way they can get what they consider "back taxes" for the year they assessed as not complete.

I'm calling the county assessor's office this morning.

We received our property tax statement (a courtesy copy actually, since our mortgage company pays the property taxes) and about fainted!

I won't go into numbers, but this is what happened:

Land Value: value went down about 7-8%
Structure: value went up approximately 65% from previous year
Total RMV Value: went up approximately 30% from previous year

Assessed Value: went up approximately 45% from previous year

THEREFORE: Our taxes went up $1,000 from last year. Yes, you heard right. *thud*

Older Building #2 Pearl District

Older Building #2 Pearl District
Originally uploaded by Rachel Houghton

Another picture from the Pearl District. This is the top of the Chown Pella building. Amazing how cool it looks with a little post processing.

Roloff Farms - Waterwheel

Roloff Farms - Waterwheel
Originally uploaded by Rachel Houghton

Another photo from Roloff Farms. A waterwheel I saw just prior to getting to the old west town.

Roloff Farms Information Pumpkin

Roloff Farms Information Pumpkin
Originally uploaded by Rachel Houghton

A message board scrapbooking friend of mine asked me to visit Roloff Farms, the pumpkin patch you've seen in "Little People, Big World" on the Discovery Channel. The Roloffs live approximately 20-25 minutes from me here in Oregon.

It was quite the experience. I've never seen lines like that, so on Saturday, we actually turned back out of the line. On Sunday morning, I got to the turnoff for the farms at 9:30, 30 minutes before they opened. There was a line, but I wasn't on the major road. I had a Starbucks drink and a book, and settled in to wait.

Once I got in, I bought a ticket for the Original Town Tour, which includes the old west town Matt Roloff built for his kids. I'll have more pictures up this week, I just wanted to get one photo up for now.

Pearl District Reflection - Tanner Springs Park

Pearl District Reflection - Tanner Springs Park
Originally uploaded by Rachel Houghton

My husband and I went on a photowalk this morning in Portland, Oregon. We did a 1.8 mile 2 hour walk around the Pearl District, taking photos of cool things. I tend to focus on textures, reflections, and lines. And since there were no convenient puddles to do reflections in, this park's water did just fine.

Me

Me
Originally uploaded by Rachel Houghton

Here I am in Las Vegas on 10/9/2008. I have sunglasses on because the smoke was so bad my eyes were bloodshot.

Paris Hotel

Paris Hotel
Originally uploaded by Rachel Houghton

This is where we stayed in Las Vegas - the Paris Hotel.