Once again – work for me and Karen, and the parents (plus Sierra) at home. Rick got up early to go birdwatching at Murphy-Hanrehan park, a decent drive south-west of the cities – and he saw a new bird! Good news! (He’s got so many now, new species are harder and harder to come by…)

Of course that wasn’t a busy enough day for him, so he took advantage of a mostly-dry day and tackled the terribly leaky garage roof. I’d noticed all winter that whenever we had a melting spell that somehow water was coming in on the South roof edge and soaking into the plywood wall! No good at all, and it was on my short list of projects to hit this summer… But, unbelievably, I hadn’t even been up on the roof to look at it yet. Earlier in the week Rick scaled a rickety lumber stack and fence to take a look and informed me that the shingles were totally shot right along the wall line. I’m guessing a combination of south-facing sunshine and ice dams for too many winters, plus some pooling right at the edge there.

Either way, time to replace them, and we just happened to have a stack of shingles left over from the previous owner and a bunch of roofing nails from an earlier roof project. He told me afterwards that he used almost a whole gallon of roofing cement to patch everything up, so that thing’s going to outlast the whole garage! No more leaking!

Meanwhile, Marianne and Sierra hit the town for some shopping, errands, and general running around. After work everyone rendezvoused at the Herkimer for happy hour and Smarty Party planning. Perfect.

 Today was a big day for everyone – more house projects for the parents, the season opener of soccer for DuoTeam, and a surprise for me!

First, the forecast: rain on and off the rest of the week. One of the projects on the wish list was resealing the deck, and it looked like it was today or never… Of course they went for it, that’s Rick with the sander at left. Oh, and look, Helpy’s doing his thing! Awesome!

Next they applied some compound that was supposed to open the pores of the wood up so it would accept the sealant better. This was then hosed off, allowed to dry, and the new sealant applied. I don’t have an actual "after" picture because sure enough as I pulled my bike through the back gate it started to rain and the wind kicked up and Karen and I had to run to cover the deck. But trust me it looks WAY better than it did!

That night Karen and I had our first soccer game of the season. We’re playing 6 on 6 co-rec, which means a smaller field and smaller goals and way more fun. Our team is actually pretty inexperienced, but we play well together (broomball) which makes an enormous difference. The bad guys snuck to an early 1-0 lead after we put poor Peter in goal (he hasn’t played soccer in forever), but then Scott (the ninja) jumped in goal and everything changed. That guy’s amazing – aggressively coming out to challenge their shooters, cutting down the angle, making smart plays, the whole works. And he has a hell of a foot! He’s able to launch his goal kicks the length of the field, which is awesome, but sometimes hard to get in their zone in time after coming to help defend. Whew. I know it’s a short field, but man… Lots of running!

We ended up winning (I scored twice and we shut them down after that first goal)!! It was a ton of fun – but even more fun was The Surprise: the Pinolera showed up! Apparently everyone knew but me, and I must say I was genuinely surprised! What fun! I couldn’t believe it when she strolled up to the soccer field!!

The day ended on a superb note, as we toasted our winning game at the Chatterbox. Sweet.

Karen and I went to work as normal on Monday, leaving my parents home with a wish list of projects. (That sounds weird, but it was honestly their idea – and really, what else are they going to do all day? (ok, fine, other than relax, read, explore, have fun…))

Anyway, they jumped into it and tackled the back yard: we’ve been having some lawn issues (rhymes with "big dog"), massively exacerbated by the new rain garden work. What to do? Sod it up!

You can’t quite tell what a huge difference it makes since you don’t have a "before" picture, but it was essentially bare dirt in this area. Also, since this picture was taken the grass around the rain garden has taken off like a shot and the whole thing looks awesome. At right, Bruno does his part to hold the new sod in place. Way to go, Helpy!

Karen and I were lucky enough to arrange a 10-day visit with my parents, who arrived Friday the 5th and will stay through the 15th. We had a hectic weekend planned, followed by a hectic week…

Saturday first thing we hit the local Farmers’ Market – no veggies on sale yet, but we got some good cheese and bread "for the party". (or for us ;) Next off to the Living Green Expo where we attended a workshop on rain gardens – that’s right, Karen’s getting her rain garden. Today we started work on the rain garden, went to the May Day festivities at Powderhorn Park (where Nate had a minor meltdown), came home and finished the work, then ate at Pizza Luce. Yum. (I’ll leave it to Karen to post about the rain garden)

I spent a few hours each night working on the Kegenator – I had to add three new taps, keg 2 new beers and some sparkling water, and add on to the CO2 manifold for two of the three pressures I was running.

Then it was unveiled – the coolest birthday present ever: The Kegenator was officially done!! Thanks, mom and Quentin, for the best sign I can imagine!!!

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!!!

I realized the majority of the Schroeder family was now blogging (if you count travelpod, which I do), and realized there was a neat trick we’re using at work that would mike life easier for us all. If you’re using an aggregator (FeedReader, RSS Owl, or web-based Bloglines, even Google), you can now subscribe to one single combined Schroeder feed! Everything’s in there, new posts will automatically appear, and it’s all in chronological order! Even the travelpod entries!

It’s available at: http://feedshake.com/mpfeeds/wzazhode5e.xml

Check it out. It’s really cool. It’s like a combined Schroeder life journal, only better.

Looks like my sister has started a blog, and in her second post she touches on something I’ve noticed for a while now: vegetarians stressing out over menu options. Karen and I go to Town Hall all the time, and there are basically two vegetarian options: grilled cheese or black bean burger. Both delicious… Grilled cheese or black bean, cheese or bean…? I mean, come on! It’s not like we have to narrow down our choices, there are only two options!! Oh, the drama…

As you may imagine, the problem gets exponentially worse when there are more options: Karen almost has a meltdown at veggie-friendly places like French Meadow.