Whew. Where has the Duo Team been? All around. It’s been a hectic but awesome holiday "break" for both of us. A la LSchroe, here’s some stats on the trip:

A few of those may be slightly off, we’ll see when the offical numbers come in.

… In other news, the Pinolera is visiting Duo Team World Headquarters for the next few weeks, and we’ve already wasted no time getting the important things done. That is, brewing beer, and taking her to our favorite brewpub. I’m hoping to set up a guest blogging account for her and she can post some pictures of the historic brother-sister brew session…

Much love to the family and all friends, hope everyone is doing great! I promise to get back on the blogging track with some fun stuff soon!

Thanks to a well-timed call from Rick last night I was able to sneak out before Karen got home from class and get some emergency St. Nick’s day supplies… The time constraints – pizza dough rising, Karen coming home soon – and Bruno’s need for attention quickly made the night into a comedy of errors: I ran downstairs with the goodies intent on wrapping some of them, but of course all the available surfaces were full of crap or homebrew equipment. So I started working on the washer, setting the rest on the dryer, and within a minute SMASH went a glass container of pistachios. Bruno was immediately curious and I about exploded with a big "Bruno, NO!" trying to keep him away before he sliced his little paws to pieces. Got him upstairs, swept up the glass, wrapped some pieces, turned to pick something else up and SMASH went several precariously stacked beer bottles I’d been drying. Holy. Crap. Decided to abort the mission until more favorable conditions arose, so I wasn’t able to do the midnight stocking fill…

Finally this morning while Karen took Bruno for a walk I was able to finish the wrapping and stocking prep. I’d just blown the surprise by accident so the only surprise left was to hide the stockings. Bruno found his in no time, and quickly destroyed his now-ex-favorite squeaky toy. I wish Kong made squeaky toys, anyone know? Then Karen found mine and finally hers, and St. Nick’s day was a roaring success! Thanks for the warning, Rick!

To make this post a bit more visually interesting, here’s a really cool item we saw on Saturday but couldn’t document at the time – and I didn’t find out what it was until yesterday: light pillars. Apparently in the right conditions ice crystals can align in the sky in such a way that urban lights are reflected upwards in a really amazing pillar of light. It was incredible to see, and there are some great shots at that link. Check it out (click the slideshow link for more).

Just wanted to give a late-night shout out to Karen while it’s still her birthday! Here’s hoping she had a great day up in the Boundary Waters and that everything is going well for them. Yay! Meanwhile, back at the house, the projects have begun in earnest — and the problems as well. Look for some posts tomorrow on what’s being done, what’s almost being done, and what I want to get done before Karen gets back on Saturday. Trouble, my friends, trouble…