Lately these are some of my favorite things:

Skecher’s new Mary Jane style peddler shoes. So adorable.

Commander Keen video game (think old-school 90’s DOS game…but oh, so much better than Nintendo!)

Any book by Sophie Kinsella, in particular the Confessions of a Shopaholic series. New fav = Shopaholic and Baby.

Good in Bed by Jennifer Weiner. Don’t let the title dissuade you!

Jumproping. Ropesport is a fun way to do it.

Warm, spring-like weather.

Mashed potatoes. (I’m serious.)

I Love Lucy DVDs.

Old-time radio shows streamed online. My favorite sites are Old Time Radio Fan and RadioSpirits.com for a variety of shows (Jack Benny, Fibber Magee and Molly, Lux Radio Theater, etc.). My favorite Web site for hearing My Favorite Husband (the predecessor of I Love Lucy) is Cheezylu Productions.

Notable recent happenings in our household:

1. John joined an ice hockey league at Peaks Ice Arena. He played on the Ice Cats before his mission (back in the dinosaur age). Since it’s been a few years since he’s actively skated and played his body is gradually resurrecting muscles it had forgotten it has. I go watch when I can, decked out in thermal pants, sweatshirt, and fleece blanket (ice arenas are cold!). John’s pretty good, and his team’s not bad. But, it turns out, the other teams are better. Even the high school team they played last week. Last night the final score was 12-2. (John’s team wasn’t the 12.) But it’s all fun, and fun to watch.

2. We’re working on revitalizing our living room. For starters, we bought a leather sofa set from a wholesale dealer in Salt Lake. It’s being shipped to us at the end of April, from China. One minor point of nervousness is that we ordered the set based on a 2 x 2 inch picture on the Internet, and we’ve never actually sat on any of the pieces from the collection. Crossing fingers that it won’t be hard as rock or ugly as all get out. But hey, the price was good!

3. I finally got my car fixed. For the last eight months or so it’s made this rumbly noise and the steering wheel has been shaky. I took it into Johnson Tire on Wednesday, and they said the front left wheel hub needed replacement. They said it was metal grinding on metal. Today I took it in and now my car is like a dream! I guess I had forgotten what it’s like to drive a normal, functioning vehicle, one that doesn’t rumble or shake. If I listen really carefully I can tell the car is running, but most of the time I don’t hear a thing. It. Is. Wonderful.

4. I got my hair cut and re-highlighted. From my previous highlighting experiences I’ve learned that when you tell a beautician that you don’t want blonde highlights, in her head that translates to “I don’t want super platinum blonde highlights, but any other shade of the blonde variety will do quite nicely.” So I’ve ended up with caramel-colored hair that, frankly, was just too light for my taste. I let it grow out, and was going to let it grow out all the way, except that it turns out two-tone hair isn’t the greatest look since it’s not the 80’s anymore. So today, whilst my car was being revived at Johnson Tire, I went to Jim’s Hair Emporium and got it taken care of. I went with a neutral brown color, somewhat close to my real color, and brown-n-copper accents. So now my hair is dark again. The copper didn’t stick especially well, but I think it’s there if the sun is shining and you squint hard enough.

So. A time of renewal: John’s renewing his hockey skills, we’re updating our living room, the car works, and my hair is dark again. Hurrah for these good things. And, we’re expecting a baby.

After an amazing vacation in the Caribbean and Florida we are back in the snowy, icy, yucky freezingness of Utah.

But here are some glimpses back to the wonderful warmth of our past week:

Us on the beach in Freeport, The Bahamas.

Us visiting Chocoben ruins about an hour south of Costa Maya, Mexico.

Lastly, just look at this water in Grand Cayman. And don’t tell me you don’t want to just jump in it right now, clothes on and everything.

I wanted to post some photos from our visit to my homeland of Iowa last May. We stayed five days, and it rained four-and-a-half of those days. But it was fun despite the wet, fifty-degree weather.

(P.S. More photos at www.flickr.com/photos/shanloraine)

Here’s us outside the Mississippi River Museum in our winter jackets. I actually didn’t mind the weather; it was just like London! It brought back many positive memories…

On our first full day in Dubuque I took John to the Mines of Spain. It’s a beautiful, woodsy park and has the Julian Dubuque monument. But dang, it was cold! And we got rained on. But we took some photos anyway.

Here’s the monument:

And Dubuque as seen from the Mines of Spain:

On our last day, in a rare break between rain storms, I took John on a walk in the pasture behind our house. There’s over 300 acres back there, I think. Here’s the view from the top of a hill. You can see the top of our house smack in the middle.

Also on our last day my parents drove us to visit the House on the Rock near Dodgeville, WI. It’s a crazy place. A huge museum built on a rock by this guy who collected all sorts of exotic things from all over. I hadn’t been there since I was a young kid. I had forgotten how musty it smells! And I had forgotten about the many music machines. You can buy tokens and use them to start the music machines playing.

Dad got a kick out of the machines. I’m not sure how much my dad spent in tokens, but it was enough to turn on about every music machine in the place. And there were LOTS! One time, about halfway through the museum, my mom, John, and I were in a room looking at the exhibits when we realized Dad wasn’t with us. We checked the hallways and saw no sign of him. Finally he comes trotting in waving his clenched hand in the air. “Had to get more tokens!”

Here’s my dad by one such machine. (In retrospect, maybe I shouldn’t have taken a picture of the only machine that featured topless golden mermaids…)

Lastly, here are my parents at the Mississippi River Museum, looking all cute and happy.

Viva la Iowa!

I don’t know what it is that makes me such a favorite of cats.

I don’t try to attract them. I don’t even like them that much. But they like me.

Kyra, for some reason, loves me more than John. If John and I are in the same room together, and John gets up to leave, Kyra stays. If I get up to leave, she goes with me.

When I get home from work, Kyra comes to greet me. When John gets home from work, and Kyra’s in another room with me, she doesn’t budge to greet him until I do.

No matter where I am, no matter what I’m doing, she’s right there.

I imagine this might be an accurate indication of what it’ll be like to parent a toddler.

I should point out, though, that Kyra loves loves loves John whenever he feeds her.

To emphasize the historical accuracy of this blog entry, here are two pictures. The first was taken when I was a teenager (dig the glasses) when my family’s cat Lightning was “helping” me with my homework. The second photo was just taken today with Kyra “helping” me work at the computer.

Some things never change.

A little-known fact about me is that I used to be a tutor in the BYU Writing Center. This was eons ago, but little has changed. I know this because I went there today for the first time in six years.

I wrote an article I’m going to submit for publication in a children’s history magazine this weekend, and I needed some feedback. I entered and signed in (I knew to do this because I remembered from working there that new clients always walk in and stand around uncomfortably before they realize they’re supposed to sign in). Then I stood uncomfortably while I waited for a tutor to come get me. The room was cluttered with wooden tables and buzzing with the low conversations of the other tutors and clients.

After a minute a smiley guy named David approached me and whisked me over to an unoccupied table. Instantly I remembered life as a writing tutor: feeling somewhat qualified, somewhat unqualified, nervous, excited, all at once.

To help him, I immediately launched into a detailed explanation of why I was there, what feedback I wanted from him, etc. In the middle of my speaking I became aware of him pursing his lips, like he was holding his breath. And he was clutching his pencil in a very urgent way.

So I interrupted myself and asked him if he was wanting to say something.

“Well,” he exhaled that breath he had been holding, “I was going to say that for things like this we usually send you to the publication lab in the library. We mostly just do academic papers and stuff here.”

“Oh.”

“But, I mean, I can still help you. If you want. But I’m supposed to send you there. ‘Cause they’re usually bored and we’re not.”

I looked around at the full tables. He was right. They were busy. But I wanted his input anyway.

One thing I had decided when I worked at the WC was that writing tutors may be better writers than the average Joe, but it was a special talent to take another’s writing and skillfully help them craft it into something better. It was a skill that most writing tutors didn’t have. I’m not sure I had it. But what I did have, and probably what keeps the WC running today with its tutors, is the ability to be a good reader. I could read a paper and give the person my opinion about it. It wasn’t necessarily scientific in terms of the rights and wrongs of writing, but it was an educated observation. A well-founded second opinion is often what jumpstarts healthy revision and makes for a better end product.

So that’s what I got from David. He did his best. I didn’t agree with all his suggestions, but I didn’t say so. Although I did take his foremost suggestion to change certain words that were too old for the audience, and that has helped the article.

Overall, the Writing Center seems to be about the same it was when I worked there. The tutors are the same young writers trying to appear more qualified than they actually are, and sometimes getting away with it. It’s not a bad place to visit, but I’m glad I don’t still work there.