What are these mysterious menu bar icons? What do these two icons represent? What is the functionality behind them? I am running On OS X Lion (10.7).
The Two Houses icon is associated with a mobile home directory--linked to an OS X server. I believe the exclamation point is its cry for help--probably telling you that the local "copy" of your home directory hasn't been sync'd to its server counterpoint for awhile.  Click on the icon and see if it gives you more info.