Well, at least one of us was happy – Wild: 2, Avs: 4… Actually, I think we all were pretty happy, it was a great games and some awesome goals. My first live hockey game, in fact! Good stuff…

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!

So maybe that’s the point of this blog right now, to be the ballast in an otherwise confusing, hard, and painful world. Because, despite all the bitching we do about finals, work, and house projects, our life is a delicious slice of cake, devoured at our leisure, with all the good and such a tiny sprinkle of the bad it’s like it doesn’t exist. Where do I get off moaning about having to repaint our kitchen??? Still, that’s where things are right now. Maybe it’s our little struggles that help balance out the big ones, and in case it turns into the opposite I’m not going to sit here and wait for it. Luck, fate, or karma, I think the lesson from all those links above is to pay attention and BE in the moment you are in, with the people you love. That’s worth shooting for.

SO! On with the petty(ish) posts! Last night, in the limited time after I’d gotten home from work and Karen got home from her work, we were hit with some gang graffiti on our garage door. On the left is a shot I barely remembered to take halfway through covering it up. That paint, by the way, came with the house, marked as "garage trim". No, it’s not.

Anyway, it’s our first graffiti hit, surely not the last, although after a fair bit of research today I feel confident that the Sur 13 gang is most likely the only one to ever hit us, and they stick to blue. So, if we copy the wise advice of our neighbor Don, we will paint our door a dark color with some high sheen and be good to go. Worth a try, and anyway it needs something that matches. (incidentally, check out The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal. Start here, and check out the video. There’s a piece up the alley that’s been covered in the exact shape as the original – what’s the point then?)

So that was frustrating for a minute, but really just a belated "Welcome to Ward 9!" present. Now we’re really residents.

Finally, on seeing the red paint in the kitchen, a fellow blogger was heard to remark – "Isn’t that the same color it was?" To which I say, "no." A thousand times, "no." It was sickly orange. Ok, the orange worked originally, but not with our stuff. Check it out: before (left) and after (right). So. Cool.

You all be good and take care of yourselves and each other. I mean it!!!

Score: Doors 2, Duo Team 1.

Our garage doors hate winter. (I wonder why?) The main car door has started to jump its tracks – no real surprise as the garage is getting old and the cold / heat has started greatly influencing its shape. The tracks seem to have spread and the door just can’t quite meet the new width. But beyond that, even when I’m manually holding the jumped section in place, it will often act like it’s hit something and reverse itself at about 1′ from closing. And our in-car remotes won’t work again until it’s fully re-opened, a full 10 seconds at least. Worse than that, it seems to be totally beyond help from the car remotes, you have to get out into the garage where you can use the wall-mounted control to stop it as soon as it reverses, un-reverse it, and continue (if you’re lucky and it worked) on your merry way. This can slow down your morning by a whole 2 or 3 minutes. I know. Agony.

And the people door has started acting up too – the deadbolt no longer fits into its slot. For a while we could force it and get by with some aggresive key work, but this morning saw the end of those shenanigans. The deadbolt refused to work, we were late, and finally had to turn the knob lock and call it good.

Obviously, something had to be done.

So after some drinks at Herkimer with the Caveman, I came home and decided a little work with the dremel was needed to expand the metal slot for the deadbolt – 5 minutes work, tops. So I changed the bit to a good metal cutting one, headed out, and sure enough the lock was working in no time. Happy with my work, I stepped outside for one more test – what the… this handle should be turning… no problem, I’ll just use the remote to open the door… wait, the remotes are in our cars… which are in the garage… which is now totally securely locked!!!

So what followed was the second consecutive night of the comedic stylings of Nate in a panic – "let’s try this old garage door opener, I think it might work." "Wait, it needs batteries!" "They’re dead and a crazy size, no go, but I can stack some AAs together!" "Ok, that’s the right voltage, why isn’t this working?" "Crap!" "Karen, can you find the code for the (broken) keypad?" "Ok, let’s try it." "That battery’s dead too??" "Ok, I’ll hold this 9V battery together with these two AAs." "Hey, it’s lighting up! Enter the code using these keys to scrape the missing terminals!" "Shit, that code’s too many digits, must be a part number scratched in a margin!" "Ok, one more try with the old remote!" "Crap!" "Karen, want to walk Bruno while I try some percussive maintenance on the door?"

In the end it didn’t even take much. I’ll leave out the details so all the criminals reading this blog won’t know how to break into our garage (although now that the deadbolt’s working, the point is moot. Solid, baby, solid.), but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. We’re in and all seems well, but… damn, where are the backup plans when you need them? Even now, I can tell I’m not going to make a backup plan. "Self, that won’t happen again," I’m saying. Perfect.

Stay tuned for more fun when I tackle the car door. You know you can’t wait.

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).