The last time I had a summer off I was still in high school. Finding myself out of work at the start of the summer was not terribly surprising given the number of previous layoffs but several of us suspected the decision would come later in the year. I’m glad it didn’t.

In the end, I had a new job just as the fall term for Sam was kicking off. Of course, when I was laid off, I didn’t know that would happen. The majority of the people I know in a similar position had struggled for a year or more to find their next role. I believed that would be the case for me too.

I had a list of activities to do each week to qualify for unemployment and I definitely wanted to find a role quickly so I did more than they required. I applied to jobs. I talked to people. I studied. I did all the things.

None of that is what I think about when I remember the summer though.

The main thing that has stuck with me is the joy of sitting outside in the sunlight with my first cup of coffee in the morning. The blue sky, the red leaves on the maple, the birds flitting around, the neighborhood dogs stopping by for water. I drove to the highest point in the city one day just to lie in the grass and stare at the sky. I spent a whole lot of time doing nothing but letting my thoughts wander.

Having peace and space to sit with my own thoughts stands in stark contrast to the utter chaos that had been my job. Being able to spend so much of that time in the sunlight was particularly special.

Some other highlights from the summer

A pair of hawks built a nest in a tree just down the road and raised a chick. The crows didn’t like this at all, but it was a joy to witness. This photo is most likely from the fledgling’s first time out of the nest. It stayed in my neighbor’s back yard for the better part of an afternoon.

I can’t talk about that summer without also talking about the cats. Anytime I stopped moving there was a cat in my lap. In bed, I had two cats beside my feet and a third nearby to climb onto my shoulders as soon as I got up. It was both lovely and overwhelming. I sometimes made excuses to leave the house just to not have a cat on me. By the time Ally moved back in though, I was generally quite content living my life as cat furniture. There’s a truly embarrassing number of cat photos on my phone.

Life has been busy in both fun ways and in “why the heck is all of this happening at the exact same time?!” ways so sitting down to write something longer than a sentence has been a challenge. I still want to post some updates/photos from the past year though.

Seattle Atmosphere

In March, I was able to drive up to Seattle for the Atmosphere conference. This is particularly notable because it was the first developer conference I’ve been to in a long time and I didn’t realize how much I missed being in a room with a lot of smart people talking about interesting technology.

Summer Road Trip

We did a road trip that took us through Ashland Oregon, Winnemucca Wyoming, Provo Utah, Brighton Utah, Los Angeles California and finally Sacramento on our way home. We saw Ally’s college graduation in Ashland, spent time with my extended family for a reunion in Brighton and then enjoyed time with Matt’s extended family at his cousin’s wedding outside of Disneyland. We spent three days at Disneyland as well. As usual, we visited a couple museums along the way.

Joseph Oregon

In July, Sam and I again went out to Joseph, Oregon to help lead a star party coordinated through Wallowology. An unfortunately timed storm shortened the event, but we still had a chance to spend time talking with park visitors about the night sky. This was the first time we’ve camped in the park. The new tent I purchased for this functioned more as a small swimming pool than any sort of protection from the elements. That first night was glorious though!! I took this picture to commemorate the trip. Ha!

Other than those and Visiting Stef in Clarkston, the only times I got out of town were related to moving kiddos in and out of various college apartments. I did get to spend a day with Ally at work though. Her last job in Ashland was working in the Archive at the university library. There were many treasures but this original Shakespeare book was the highlight for me.

More to come later.

Ally is still on the ship off the coast of Georgia so we definitely missed her for Thanksgiving. Sam came up for the long weekend and Matt’s parents came for Thanksgiving dinner. This term for Sam is rather strenuous so he spent most of the weekend either doing homework or sleeping. It’s great to have him home even if I’m just sitting next to him trying not to make noise. Ha!

As usual, I tried to recreate my mom’s apple pie. As usual, it was pretty far removed from the magic she used to create. I realized that this was actually just fine and somehow that let me enjoy the process a little more. It was my best pie yet.

One bit of excitement was getting to meet Sam’s girlfriend, Alex. Sam has a pretty solid track record for choosing good friends so it was no surprise that he’s chosen a lovely person to date as well.

My daughter Ally recently finished her bachelor’s degree focused on archaeology. While in school, she helped with a project for the Maxville Heritage Interpretive Center (MHIC) in Maxville, Oregon. Maxville started as a logging company town in 1923 and was abandoned after about 20 years. Maxville was unique in that the logging company didn’t just hire white loggers. Black people made up about a tenth of the population of Maxville. Oregon was explicit about excluding Black people from living here from the start. It wasn’t until 1926 that the last of these laws were repealed. (This certainly didn’t put an end to racism in Oregon, unfortunately.)

Since 2007, the daughter of one of the Black loggers has been working to bring the story of Maxville to life.

Due to Jim Crow laws, Maxville was segregated. The homes in the Black neighborhood were brought in on the railroad and then removed while the homes in the white neighborhood were more permanent. The archaeology project involved surveying and remote sensing to confirm where the neighborhoods were and then excavating in both white and Black neighborhoods.

At a gala for MHIC a couple weeks ago, Ally’s college advisor gave a presentation about their project. Ally joined him to staff a table before the presentations began.

I was lost in conversation with someone at my table when I saw Ally’s advisor hurrying over. He wanted to make sure I saw Ally talking with former Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski about the project. I would have missed this if Mark hadn’t gotten my attention! This project has been a highlight of Ally’s education and I’m glad she’s getting a chance to share her excitement with others. Photo taken by Mark Tveskov.

If you’re curious, more information about MHIC can be found here and here.

Edited to credit the photograph to Mark Tveskov.

Week one of the new job is done. I haven’t met everyone on the new team yet, but the things I was impressed with in the interviews (mostly culture related) seem to be holding true. Adjusting my schedule to overlap with everyone in their different timezones is going more slowly than I’d like (getting over covid is probably related), but next week should be easier.

It’s a full stack engineering team with embedded QA. My limited front-end experience should make this more fun! Ha!

I’ve been spending a lot of time in the backyard with my sister the last couple days. From the time I wake up until after dinner, in fact.

Many visitors come to visit so I figured I’d collect a list. I used Merlin to collect the list of birds, but most of them I’ve seen myself this week.

Birds:

• Red-breasted Nuthatch
• Song Sparrow
• American Crow
• Dark-eyed Junco
• Cedar Waxwing - I keep hearing this cute guy, but I haven’t gotten to see him.
• Golden-crowned Kinglet
• Northern Flicker
• Steller’s Jay
• Chestnut-backed Chickadee
• House Finch
• Brown Creeper
• Black-capped Chickadee
• Anna’s Hummingbird
• Spotted Towhee
• Black Phoebe (I have never seen this one in the yard and I think Merlin is just wrong.)

Squirrels:

• Douglas
• Western Gray
• American Red

Other things:

• Many spiders. Mostly small. A few not small. One quite large.
• So many ants. I found one in my hair. There’s one walking across the top of the laptop right now.
• At least one rat that must live under a big Cedar back here.

I should generally spend more time out here seeing as how it’s so lovely (even with the rat), but this week I’m specifically trying not to give my family covid. My sister came into town for the stitch retreat we went to last weekend and by the end she started feeling ill. So here we are. She canceled her flight home and I’m getting extra time with her which is nice, but so many plans for this week have had to be canceled.

I’m rather grateful, however, that the weather is lovely and we have a cozy space to stay that reduces the risk for my husband and daughter.

Last Friday I heard from two different companies that I would most likely be getting job offers this week. There was a definite sense of relief Friday night.

Saturday though, I could barely keep my eyes open. I thought I might be getting sick, but I woke up from my fourth (!!!) nap finally feeling like myself.

By the end of the day Tuesday, I had two solid offers. Both at companies with people that greatly impressed me in the interviews, both at companies I had been referred to by people I would like to work with, both jobs I would almost certainly enjoy and continue to grow in. The titles are different, but not significantly. The pay is different, but not significantly. I am so grateful for this outcome, but also… saying no to something potentially great is really hard.

How did I choose? One of the companies had an interview process that gave me more time to ask questions of them. That led to a really great discussion about engineering culture, growth and trade-offs. It also led to having a better understanding of the people I would be leading and the struggles they are facing as a company. The other company had no red flags at all, I just didn’t get a chance to ask enough questions. Saying no to them was really painful.

Somehow it seems the emotions with accepting a new job have been more pronounced than those of being laid off 3 months ago. All that being said, I’ve accepted a new position with people I’m excited to work with! I need to celebrate!! 😊

First though, I think I’ll take a nap.

I lucked out in the marriage department. Twenty one years ago I married a sweet, intelligent, adorable human that still makes me want to be a better version of myself.

Did I mention he’s adorable?!

While certainly not unexpected, it’s still disappointing. Just shy of 4 years in, I was laid off this week. This is the only time in my adult life that I’m leaving a job without something else already lined up. There are obviously various administrative tasks to complete, but that list is nearly complete.

So, now what?

Based on the experience of many excellent software engineers and engineering leaders that have recently found themselves in this position, it’s likely going to take a while to find that next role.

I need a new job and while I may end up happy just to find any position at all, I think it’s worth thinking about what that next role would ideally look like. The one thing I know would be on that list is some form of community. I like people. :) Collaborating with people working on projects that make life better for more people seems pretty great, doesn’t it? That’s not really a job description though, so I guess I have more thinking to do. Ha!

The other thing I’m wondering is how to make the most of this time. I mean that both in terms of finding that next role and also in terms of having never had time off like this before and wanting to enjoy a little sunshine. I’m grateful this happened at the start of summer. I’ve offered suggestions related to this to friends and family in the past so I suppose I’ll start with those ideas and see how well they work for me. Scheduling relaxation time is the one thing that I suspect may be the hardest to actually do.

Spring in our yard is colorful. We have several rhododendron bushes that bloom at different times. One of the neighbors mentioned that she counts the white rhodie in my backyard blooming as the start of spring, regardless of what the calendar says. At the moment however, this pink one is the star. People in the neighborhood have said they plan their walking routes to include our street just to see this one plant.

The rhodies aren’t the only colorful thing though. This corner of my yard makes both me and the bees happy.

As it’s Easter, I suppose I’ll include this bunny that startled me (and then itself) earlier this week.

2025! Is January 8th too late to wish someone a Happy New Year? I say no. Happy New Year!

The holidays were lovely. Both kids were in town for Christmas and there’s always a lot of laughter when they are around. We watched some good movies (The Holdovers and Klaus stand out most) and some not so good movies (Red One, eek!). We also watched the series Nobody Wants This which I turned on looking for something non-serious to watch while stitching and it turned out to be so good, I restarted it and watched it all the way through more than once. Apparently my son had told us to watch it before, but I hadn’t. I’d rewatch it again today if I could, honestly.

To get out of the house, we went downtown to see the big Christmas tree in Pioneer Square and to see the Gingerbread House display at the Benson hotel. I’m planning to do this again next year, it was a good way to get into the spirit of the season.

As has become tradition, we rang in the New Year with the neighbors. I highly recommend becoming friends with the people that live all around you.

We’re in the part of the year that reminds me that I live in THE NORTH. (Relative to my own past.) While the sun is out it’s generally flooding all rooms with southern facing windows, regardless of time of day. And yet, the nightlight I finally put in the upstairs hallway hasn’t turned off once!

We purchased an older, low-mileage Subaru for the daughter. She’s graduating this year and will likely move out of the small walkable town she’s living in so it was time. She drove it up to Whidbey Island for New Years and then drove it down to her place in time for school. It should be a great car for her. The son borrowed my vehicle to head back to school early (he wanted some time without the roommates in his apartment) so I’m getting to experience life with only one vehicle between my husband and I. It turns out that it is really easy if you work from home, eat leftovers for lunch every day and the neighbors are the people you spend most of your time with. On the other hand, after 5 years of working almost exclusively from home I’m usually anxious to get out of here. Perhaps having the need to have 2 vehicles is more aspirational than current reality.

January 1, 2025 marked 3 years that I have been sewing or stitching something daily. Most days I spend just 20 minutes or so, but I’ve learned a lot and it’s often a nice way to work through any of life’s frustrations. I have fabric picked out for a few bags I’m really exciting to get started on.

I’m continuing to volunteer for the woodworking guild this year. Figuring out how to organize several classes each month with instructors and assistants through some mechanism other than email is a goal for 2025. If you have suggestions, please send them my way.

Finally, I started learning Svelte and SvelteKit over the break. Matt and I have a couple projects we’d like to collaborate on this year and I don’t know the tools he’d like to use! I’m impressed so far with Svelte and I’m really looking forward to building something with Matt.