I found a new very warm hat. This one for clearance at $6.99 at JC Penney which was such a great deal.

We went to go see Matt and Kim as part of the Christmas Kerfuffle concert at the First Niagara Center. There were some other bands including Third Eye Blind.

I love Matt and Kim's live performance. It is one of the most exciting and energetic shows there are. They are seem totally on.

The giant balloon drop was pretty out of control.

The only shitty thing was we didn't get floor tickets. Its not fun being at a dancey energetic event in seats.

I really thought that I had bought floor tickets but when we got there to pick up the will call tickets, it wasn't for the floor section. It's so frustrating because I felt like I had tripple confirmed it, guess not.

This was one of my favorite tapes from the past. I found it at one of those trade in music stores in high school. Then it sat in hoarder box after hoarder box. Using Google music I found so much more. It's crazy how accessible music is now.

This year I made the usual grapefruit juice and cranberry sauce with ginger but I also added clove and cinnamon. It was a really yummy combo.

Take 2 bags of cranberries, 1 cup of fresh squeezed grapefruit and orange juice, 0.5 cups water. Boil cranberries. Add grated ginger, clove and cinnamon bark roll to taste. Mash with spoon and keep stiring till jelly like. Add turbinado sugar to taste. You could substitute regular sugar or brown sugar.

We went to my parents for dinner. It was delicious. Afterwards (e:mike) and I went to the mall at 1am and got lots of great deals.

I did not get the coffee maker of my dreams.

Im all about preserving the historic nature of our house. Its one of the few that are the exact original design inside and out in our neighborhood.

At the same time we think responsible energy and renewable enegry are important so when the opportunity arrose to get solar pabels, we jumped on it.

After like a year of working on it and trying to get approval by the preservation board, we finally got the solar panels installed two weeks ago. They are on the side of the house facing the driveway.

The pattern looks asymmetrical because Tim Tielman of the preservation board would not approve the ones under that other dormer. Unfortunately, those ones got the most sun due to their postion and lack of shadowing. Therefore his decision, which really only makes it uglier, lowers our overall energy production significantly.

Now that it's asymmetrical it also draws way more attention to it than it would if it matched. Someone actually asked me if the ones under the front dormer blew off during the wind storm! Seeing as it's not a permanent fixture and seeing as the roof is covered in non historically accurate asphalt shingles, I don't understand why he had to be a dick about it.

The solar company we used almost quit on us after three rounds trying to get it approved.

Meanwhile, just down the street in the same historic district we have Sinatra paving the front yard of a house in asphalt and giant asphalt parking lot with cheap ass home depot special wood fence across from fugazi where the art voice building used to be.

I wish I had the deep pockets to just buy off the preservation board like the big players do.