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.