same blog...new location

Sooooooooo... I have been doing a horrible job at keeping this blog updated. I have been doing such a bad job that I have decided to start over. Kind of. I will no longer be posting here at empty smith. But I will be posting...just some place new. I have moved my blog over to wordpress and given it a fancy new name. So from here on out if you want to read about the mundane things going on in my life you will have to go here: www.ohpinon.wordpress.com I hope to see you there.

update

So it has been a little over a month since my last post. AND boy what a month it has been. I have so much to write about...but not right now...stay tuned for future posts. I am currently in El Paso, TX for Husband's brother's wedding. It is a little down time from my exhausting job (yup, that's right, I have a job) but so far has not been at all relaxing. Anyway...here is a little text conversation I had with Husband yesterday. It may (or may not) shed some light on what I have been doing with myself. Me: My whole body hurts this morning. I have bruises EVERYWHERE! Husband: That's not good. Why are you all banged up? M: Horses. H: Why of course. M: I even have bruises on the insides of my thighs from riding James. H: (the sound of crickets) M: Oh...and James is a horse...NOT a man. H: HaHa! Okay...I was like WHAT?!?!?! I am happy you are working with horses again.

movin' on out

Well it has been decided…I am moving back to Colorado. MOVING!!! I had already planned on going back to Colorado for the summer. Then we found out that our property manager back in Denver was getting out of the property managing business. We also found out that the renters of said property were getting out of the renting from us business. It was like the stars were aligned and I was being beckoned back to Denver. It got me thinking…did it really make sense for me to stay up here? So I drew up a little pros and cons list of staying up here: PROS: I already live here Washington is pretty IKEA Close to water where you can see whales Conveyor belt sushi joints Trader Joes CONS: It’s not Colorado I hate living here Rain No Family (well Husband has family here, none of which I have met in the 16 months I have lived here) Higher cost of living Rain All my best friends are in Denver They watch baseball inside (because of Rain) Volcanoes Rain TRAFFIC Seahawk fans High sales tax The price of parking down town Oh…and did I mention the rain? Don’t get me wrong, there are a million great things about living in western Washington. I just think that it takes a certain type of person to live up here and I am not that type of person. Plus I thought it was going to be exactly like the movie Singles and it isn’t…what a jip and where the hell is Matt Dillon? (totally kidding about that last bit with the exception of the Matt Dillon part…mmmmmm Matt Dillon). Speaking of Singles, I had Husband watch it before we moved up here and he thought it sucked. I was crushed because I have loved that movie since high school. I have done and seen a lot of cool things since coming up here. There is a part of me that is going to miss this place. But there is an even bigger part of me that needs to be back in Colorado. Mostly the part that need the support system I have back there and need so much while Husband is deployed. So in the very near future, with the help of Liza, Jenn, and Fallon, I will be packing up and moving out. Over half of my stuff has been in storage for the past 3 yeas and I am pretty excited about having all my things unpacked and under the same roof. Organizing this move has been a major pain in the ass, but things are coming together. I have been worried about driving a big ass U-Haul cross country. Then this past weekend I caught an episode of Tori and Dean’s Home Sweet Hollywood and Tori was driving an RV. It made me feel better because I figure if Donna Martin can drive an RV then I should have no problem with a U-Haul.

Oro Grande, New Mexico

Oro Grande is located at the south east tip of the White Sands Military Reservation, about half way between El Paso, TX and Alamogordo, NM. The first time we drove through Oro Grande we were heading up to the New Mexico Museum of Space History in Alamogordo with Husband’s dad. The town is tiny…you know the type that if you blink you will miss it. The main drag consists of a gas station, a tavern, an RV park, a one room school house, and a post office. Set back off of the main drag are maybe 9 or 10 mobile homes. While tiny, to me it had kind of a quirky character. My kinda town. Oro Grande was a mining town established in 1905 and was originally called Jarilla Junction due to its proximity to the Jarilla Mountains. The name was changed to Oro Grande (Big Gold) during the 1906 gold rush. The population of Oro Grande boomed to 2000 during that time, but quickly collapsed when it was found there was far less gold than expected. If you were to Google Oro Grande you would find that most sites have it listed as a ghost town.So why would a ghost town have a gas station, a tavern and a post office? That would be because Oro Grande is not a ghost town at all. While I would guess the population as less than 20 people, there are people there. In the few seconds it took us to drive through town Husband’s dad told us that in the early 1980s they started to put in the infrastructure for Oro Grange to once again be a booming town. Ronald Reagan had this idea for the use ground and space-based systems to protect the United States from attack by strategic nuclear ballistic missles. It was loving dubbed “Star Wars”. This program would take place at White Sands Missile Range. The people who had jobs created by this program would live in Oro Grande. Well we all know how that worked out. Anyway…like I said it was a quirky town and I wanted to take pictures of it. Even though I exclaimed that I thought it was a great little town and I that I would like to take some pictures…we didn’t stop. Coming or going. Boo! I was bummed but had a plan. I asked husband if we could detour our route north to Denver so that we could go through Oro Grande. And because he loves me and wants me to be happy he agreed. It worked out well because the light first thing in the morning was way better than the harsh desert light in the middle of the day.

Thank you Easter Bunny...BAWK BAWK

My name is Melinda, I am 34 years old, and I have never taken part in an Easter egg hunt. When I was little I had heard of this magical event called an Easter egg hunt. The Monday after Easter I would listen to my friends regaling stories of how they searched all over the yard and house for both real and plastic eggs. The plastic eggs were the best to find as they contained candy, small toys, and sometimes money. Because isn’t that what Easter is all about…plastic eggs filled with MONEY? I just felt my mom and brother rolls theirs eyes and shake their heads at that last sentence. It was a joke…I know that Easter is all about JESUS (and candy) and nothing but JESUS (and dyed eggs…and in some houses plastic eggs filled with MONEY). As you know Husband is Latino and Latinos have a whole different twist with what one does with Easter eggs. They call them Cascarones. A cascarones is an egg that has had the insides blown out, is decorated like an Easter egg, and then filled with confetti. The Mexican tradition is to break the cascarones over the head for good luck. Husband has told me stories of him and many cousins running around his grandma’s backyard smashing eggs over each other’s heads. There is even a story about, how after a few adult beverages, the Aunts and Uncles got involved. Instead of cascarones, they used whole, raw eggs. The cascarones sound like a fun tradition, not as fun as plastic eggs filled with money, but fun nonetheless. My family had its own Easter tradition. We did all the usual Easter stuff like dying eggs, going to church, and having ham and scalloped potatoes for dinner. Instead of the Easter Bunny hiding eggs all over the yard and the house, he hid our Easter baskets. We would wake up and run all over the house looking in every nook and cranny for those baskets. The Easter bunny did not disappoint. The amount of candy in those baskets made the best of Halloween hauls pale in comparison. Once found we would eat jelly beans, chocolate bunnies, and Cadbury crème eggs for breakfast. We would then head to church (because Easter is all about JESUS) hopped up on sugar. As I am alone up here in Washington now, I will be spending the day with a coworker of Husband’s and her family. It is sunny right now, and if the weather holds there will be an Easter egg hunt. I am pretty excited about that. I hope those little kids are ready for some stiff competition…because I am in it to win it. While I don’t wave my religious/spiritual beliefs around, I think it is important to take a step back to reflect on ourselves and to respect the beliefs of others. Enjoy your friends and family and the rebirth of spring. Happy Easter!

just a quick cuddle before you go

I am not a cuddler…nor have I ever been a cuddler. Then I met Husband, and I became a cuddler, kinda. Husband is a human furnace. A human furnace that will sleep under all the covers, including a goose down comforter, when it is 95 degrees outside. If you were to walk into our bedroom on any given night you would find husband on his side of the bed burrito-ed in the covers, while on my side of the bed I have kicked off all of the covers and am going into heat stroke from the heat the man laying next to me is producing. Husband is also a member of the blanket police. It is like he has an internal alarm that goes off every time I kick my way out of the oppressive heat that is our shared bed. He senses that I am trying to drop my body temperature to that of a normal person and wakes up and pulls the blankets back up around my ears so he can continue cooking me like a Sunday roast. While I love falling asleep next to husband, I don’t like the fact that if I get too close to him that I will end up sweating as if I had just run 3 miles. So we came up with a compromise. Instead of falling asleep in each others arms, we fall asleep holding hands. I know…we’re cute right? Husband left for his deployment at 1 am this morning. We didn’t get a whole night together so after dinner we came home and climbed into bed and we cuddled. We only had a few hours and we spent those few hours wrapped around one another sleeping. I had never been more comfortable in my life.

home again, home again...

…Jiggity Jig! After 15 days, 9 states, and 4328 miles, we are finally home. Although we spent 5 days in El Paso and another 5 days in Denver, it felt as if we spent the entire 15 days in a vehicle. We were always on the go, doing this and that, meeting up with people. The driving to and fro was never ending. We had a very low key time in Denver. It was a week that was all about Husband. We made sure that he got to see the people that mean the most to him. We had dinner one night with his doubles volleyball partner and her fiancé, and another night he got to play with his sand volleyball team. He had a lot of fun that night. It also made his realize just how much he missed his life in Colorado. We got to experience typical spring time Colorado weather. March is typically Colorado’s snowiest month…and it did not disappoint. The last day we had some business to take care of in the morning and some happy hour action planned for the evening. We set out that morning in heavy snow fall with a nice side of fog. We were on our way home from our morning meeting when while going about 60 on the highway my engine quits. QUITS! I get pulled over to the side of the road and Husband and I sit there looking at each other. Never have I been more thankful for a cell phone with 3G service. I get started on finding a tow truck to pick us up is a snow storm and Husband starts calling nearby repair shops. Now while breaking down is not lucky, we were able to get a tow in under 45 minutes, which in a snow storm is lucky. He happened to be close by, otherwise it would have been a 6 hour wait. The bad news was that my fuel pump had gone out and it was looking like we were not going to be on the road at 6 am the next morning. The repair shop wanted to get us the truck back that night, but as the day progressed it became clear that just wasn't going to happen. Good news is that my winter driving skills are still intact and with the use of my mom's car I got us to happy hour on time. Also...I did some name dropping and was able to get a discount on the repairs. We got on the road 6 hours late, but managed to make good time and got home exactly when we thought we would. Don’t get me wrong, I love being on vacation, but I love coming home more. Man it is going to feel so good to sleep in our own bed tonight.

Carlsbad Caverns

I’m not gonna lie, when it was first suggested that we go to Carlsbad I was not all “WOOHOO let’s go to a cave”. I guess going into caves can be added to my list of irrational fears. Caves are dark, dank, and down right creepy. There are things in caves that could jump out of the darkness and onto to you. Really, what it is to keep a stalactite from dropping from the roof of the cave and impaling you…WHAT I ask you? But we went to the big cave anyway. When I say big cave I mean super giant, humongous, gargantuan cave. I knew it was big, I just didn’t know it was that BIG. And thank goodness it was so big…because this is one gal you are not going to find spelunking. As we enter this HUGE cave, I cannot help but to wonder aloud about the odds of the ceiling falling down on us. Husband looked at me (I am guessing he looked at me as it was very dark) and said that maybe I should not be thinking like that…and while I was at it maybe I should keep my irrational fears to myself…and hows about I busy myself with snapping photos instead of trying to freak myself out. So I snapped some photos. Well what I actually did was point my camera into the darkness and hoped I would get something worth looking at. After playing with settings and shutter speed I got a lot of dark blurry images. I also got a few really cool ones too. I loved all textures and how alive the cave felt. I have never been someplace that felt so other worldly. It was truly amazing. All in all I was very happy with our cave excursion. I want to thank my in-laws for taking us up there. If I ever get the chance to go back I need to remember to bring a tripod, a shoe-mount flash, and maybe a macro lens. That’s not too much extra to carry a mile down into the ground is it? If the mood strikes, you can look at some of the other images I took here.

Bucket

This handsome devil is named Bucket. He is a very sweet boy.

four corners

I lived in Colorado for roughly 30 years. I took for granted the fact that I lived in a state that had so many beautiful places to go and things to do. Take for instance Mesa Verde, The Great Sand Dunes, and Four Corners. I had always wanted to go but never managed to make it to any of those places. Well on our third and final day of driving Husband and I figured we could tick Four Corners off our list as it was sorta on our way south. Now if you are not familiar with what the Four Corners area is then I am betting you failed basic US geography. Anyway…Four Corners is a geographic survey point where the states of Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico come together. It is a popular stop for tourist because it is the only place in the United States that you can stand in four states at the same time. I am a little excited because I love cheesy tourist traps. So I drive up the hill, make the right turn, and this is what we see… Ummmmm…Yeah…Maybe next time. So we weren't able to stand in four states at one time. As a consolation prize the road we were in took us into and out of each of those four states in less than 20 minutes.

Arches

Whenever I think about Arches National Park I think of fiery orange rocks against blue-er than blue skies…and those where the type of images I wanted capture. Needless to say I was bummed when I woke up to gray skies and rain on day two of our road trip. But you never know…the sun could come out. We took our time and got on the road at around 8:30 am. The drive to Moab is only about 180 miles. After the marathon day of driving we had the day before it was nice to not be pressed for time. We headed south on Highway 6 and straight into a snow storm. Grumble. Living in Washington I have gotten used to shooting the grayness of rain clouds. Snow is a whole nother animal. But like I said the sun could come out…maybe. And you know what? It did! WOOHOO!!! I was going to get the fiery orange rocks and the blue-er than blue skies. But you know how clouds can be…they are sneaky sons of bitches and creep in when you least expect them. As in Colorado the saying “if you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes” also holds true in Utah. The further we went into the park the more the weather changed. You turn to the north you get one thing, and the south another. After 4 hours of hiking around through deep mud and snow we decided to call it a day. I was happy with the images I had shot and was in need of a beer. On our way out of the park good ol’ Mother Nature gave us one last photo op… If interested you can take a look at some of my favorite images here

Sneak Peak...Moab

We went to Moab on our way to Texas. I have some editing to do on the images I shot but thought I would give you a quick preview. I call it "Moab gives you the finger". Enjoy!

drive, drive, and drive some more

We left the house at 4:50 this morning for the first leg of our road trip south. We had a reservation at a hotel in Orem, Utah…a mere 900 miles from our starting point. We drove though parts of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Utah that I had never been to before. There were so many things that I saw in the quick glimpse I got as we sped by at 80 mph that I wanted to stop and take pictures of. Mostly old barns…I really have a thing for old barns. While Husband supports me getting back into photography, he really does not have the patience for me getting back into photography while we are trying to drive 900 miles in a reasonable amount of time. So only one photo was taken today and it was taken by Husband as he does not like me snapping photos while driving…go figure. This image was captured just west of the Cascades at about 6:45 this morning. Not too shabby for being taken through a cracked windshield of a vehicle traveling a tad over the posted speed limit. We did end up getting to the hotel in a reasonable amount of time, 15 hours. That includes stopping for gas, food, and at 6 different rest stops (we drink way too much water for people on a road trip). Tomorrow is an easy drive day. We are going to Moab and Arches National Park. The weather is supposed to be crappy but I am still very excited! Side note: After a year of driving in Washington, I cannot tell you how nice it was to be driving in the Rocky Mountains again…you know where driving at or above the speed limit and tailgating is not only the norm but is practically expected. Ahhhh…it is good to be heading home.

early signs of spring

I am loving the trees up here right now. It seems with the mild weather that spring has come early. Everywhere you look you see the soft pinks and whites of cherry and plum blossoms. I went for a walk this afternoon and it was like walking in a fairytale with all the petals delicately floating down around me. There are so many things that flower up here this time of year. I hope that with our upcoming trip that everything will still be in bloom when we get back.

La Conner, WA

I have had the pleasure of meeting many of Liza’s relatives. If I were to sum up this brood in one word it would be creative. Her father was a beat poet, her sister a talented painter, and Liza herself is a talented writer. So when she said she wanted to drive up to La Conner to visit her uncle, I was game. Liza’s uncle is Fred Owens, author of the Frog Hospital blog (soon to be a book by the same name) and a contributor to the La Conner Weekly News. La Conner is located about an hour north of Seattle in the Skagit Valley. The Skagit Valley is most famously know for the tulip festival in the spring (it might be known for something other than the festival, but I don’t know what that would be). We met Fred at a tiny little café called Le Crema Coffee (which has the best Chai in the world…no really…the best). It had been 10 years since the last time Liza had seen her uncle so they had a lot of catching up to do. So we sat back, drank our coffee, and they did just that. We then went on a walking tour of the village of La Conner with Fred pointing out the sights, giving us a brief history lesson, and telling us funny stories. We stopped for lunch at a little deli over looking the Swinomish Channel. Fred then took us on a driving tour of some of the local farms located along the Skagit river. We saw cows, sheep, daffodils, and cabbage. The cabbage farms up there produce seeds, not large heads of cabbage. Fred had just written an article about the farming of cabbage seeds. We learned so much about the process of farming cabbage seeds that I am confident that Liza and I now had enough knowledge that we could start our own farm. La Conner has a lot of cute little shops and boutiques, so after we said our goodbyes to Fred we did a little window shopping and then stopped at the La Conner Brewing Company for a beer. We had a really fun day and I really enjoyed meeting Fred. He was quite the character, which I had come to expect from a member of Liza’s family. It is good to know that if I am ever up that way that I have someone to have a cup of coffee with.

a day out

My oldest friend Liza has come to visit. Yesterday was her birthday so we went down town to do touristy things. I snapped a few photos while we were out.

Pluses and Minuses

You know that saying “There is never a perfect time to have a baby”? That is what ran through my head as I stood in the bathroom staring at that stick waiting for a plus or a minus to appear. I could not think of a worse time for me to find out I was pregnant...you know with Husband deploying and all. This was the first pregnancy test I have taken in 10 years where I was like please, Please, PLEASE don’t be positive. Babies. It is no secret how badly I would like to have a child. Yet no babies for me. It is not for lack of trying…believe me I have tried. I tried for years with that other guy I was married to. A woman has roughly 36 hours a month in which to get pregnant. The timing has to be pretty spot on. I was married to a guy who traveled for business and averaged only 64 days a year at home…none of which happen to be while I was ovulating. But I persisted until after two years of trying he told me he did not want kids. He told me this over the phone at 2 am while I was away on business. There is a reason I am not married to this guy anymore. Jerk. It was during that time that I became the friend that my girlfriends did not want to tell that they were pregnant. They would allude to it and give subtle clues until I would flat out ask if they were pregnant. They would then gush that yes they were, how happy they were, and that they weren’t trying to keep it from me they just didn’t want to hurt my feelings. Blah…whatever. I am genuinely happy when I find out a girlfriend is pregnant, really I am. I might be saying ‘stupid fertile bitches’ but what I really mean is ‘I am soooooo happy for you’. I am going to be 35 this year, and while Husband thinks we have all the time in the world, let’s face it I am not getting any younger. He does want to have kids though. He wants to be there for every part of the pregnancy, birth, and those first few months. If it turned out I was pregnant now he would miss all that. But like all those other tests taken in the past, this one came back negative. I walked out of the bathroom, gave Husband the thumbs down with a wink and a smile, and went on about my business. Even though I was relieved that the test came back negative, there is still a tiny part of me that wanted to see a plus sign.

volcanos are scary

I live in a state that has these… You know, because a little ol' mountain can go from looking like this one day… …to looking like this the next. And when this one decides to go all kablooy… …they say it could cause one of these. YIKES! Since moving here I have had to add earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis to my list of what one might call irrational fears. This list also includes tornadoes, public restrooms, touching raw chicken, and clowns (especially clowns). But let’s stick to volcanoes shall we. The town we live in is built in the path of the Osceola Mudflow (look it up) so if Mt Rainier decides to blow its top we are pretty much toast. They say there is no evidence of an imminent eruption…but that does not mean that it won’t happen. This is the same reason I am all sorts of leery about going to Yellowstone. Sure it is beautiful, has an amazing array of wildlife, and let’s not forget about Old Faithful…and oh yeah it is also a SUPER VOLCANO. That is like a regular volcano times a gazillion. And while they say there is no evidence of an imminent eruption there either, the irrational fear kicks in that if I get anywhere near it…BLAM-O! We could then kiss a big chunk Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho goodbye. My sister and her family live in Idaho. I don’t think that I could live with the fact that me going to Yellowstone caused them to be blown up. Granted I would have been blown up too…but you get my drift. Now here is the funny part. I am not a lover of anything having to do with science. I only took the minimum required amount of science classes in school so I could make room in my schedule for more art classes. Husband is totally into science (he went to a nerdy engineering school and everything) and once asked me if I were to choose a science-y type of job what would I choose. Do you know what I said? VOLCANOLOGY!!! My reason…because lava is sooooo cool looking and I want to take pictures of it and poke at it with sticks. Anyway…seeing as Husband and I blew our wad on our first day in Oregon, it left us with the second day of our trip wide open. Day one was more about things I wanted to do so I left the activities of day two up to Husband. He chose going to see Mt St Helens. YEAH!!! We stopped at the visitors center first and watched the 13 minute video about the eruption…very informative. Did you know that Harry Truman was killed in the blast? At first I was like ‘wow, why weren’t we taught in school?’ One would think that learning that the 33rd president of the United States was killed by a Volcano was an interesting bit of history. Then ones' husband reminds you that Harry Truman the president died in 1972 and that the Harry Truman that was killed in the eruption was just a man that happened to have the same name of said president. Because we were there in the winter we were not able to go up to the Johnston Ridge Observatory. One of the rangers at the visitors center told us the best place to get a good look at the mountain this time of year was at the Clearwater Viewpoint. We hopped in the truck and headed in that direction. We got lucky, just a few minutes after I snapped the last photo the clouds moved in and surrounded the top of the mountain. Husband wants to go back in the summer so we can get up close to the mountain. I figure that I got this close and nothing catastrophic happened so why not.

we went to Oregon

We get told all the time about all the beautiful places to see and cool things to do in the great state of Washington. Husband had a bunch of use or lose time to use up, so we decided to take a few days in between Christmas and New Years to go to beautiful places and do cool things. We decided to drive down to the Oregon coast. When there are so many things to do here in Washington, why would we drive down to Oregon? The answer is simple…Goonies was not filmed in Washington. (Don't worry...this is not a Goonies super fan post) It was just going to be a quick two day trip and there were only three things I wanted to do, go to Astoria and Cannon Beach (Goonies), then head down to Tillamook to eat cheese. We got to Astoria, grabbed a quick bite to eat, and drove around to see the Jail and the Walsh house. I did not take any pictures in town because I am lazy and there was no parking. Plus I mostly wanted to take pictures of the ocean. While driving down the northern Oregon coast you will come upon a different beach every few miles. The first one we stopped at was Seaside, a fun little resort town. We were surprised to find so many people on the beach on a Monday in December. I am sure this place is crazy in the summer…and that you don’t find people dressed like this: We then hopped back in the truck and drove down to Cannon Beach. I was excited to see Haystack Rock (yeah that’s right I was excited about seeing a rock). It was a beautiful day…warm and sunny. We spent about two hours walking on the beach, me snapping a million photos and Husband complaining about me taking so many pictures. Back in the truck and a few more stops to look at the pretty view… Then to Tillamook for cheese and ice cream. ROCKY ROAD! While I never saw a cow in Tillamook, I know they are there somewhere. The whole town smells like Greeley (those from Colorado know what I am talking about). We ended up doing all the things we had planned to do over the two days in the first day. That left us with nothing to do the next day. So as we drove towards the hotel in Portland we mulled over options for the next day. Tommorows post...Volcanos and why they scare the crap out of me!