National Grid has been sending these letters every couple of months telling you your power consumption compared to your neighbors. I'm not sure how they define that besides similar sized houses near you. Besides the fact that it should be an email and not paper I love it. I wish all utilities did this for consumption, garbage vs recycling, etc.

We always did terrible because of the tortoise and his insane heat demands. But now that he's solar powered in the desert, and we are a little, we're number 7!

This one covers October/November, when we only had solar panels for 3/4 of November (but still a sunny November). You can see our out of control power consumption pre-panel.

I'd like to make it to number one. I think we could do it.





Interestingly I read this article the other day about racial/class disparities in solar panel interest and purchase. It also talks about how some utilities try to pitch home solar panels as a reason to raise rates, especially for lower income houses. Isn't that crazy? Shouldn't they be trying to incentivize everyone to reduce their demand on the grid during the day (aka peak usage when the expensive gas plants turn on)?

For the new year, we headed down to Allegany to glamp in the cabins. Glamping it was - the cabins had heat, a stove, a fridge and a chirpy smoke detector. Our cabin had (e:heidi), (e:dianne), Pierce and (e:flacidness), and Tyler in it.

Not only was it new years but Jax's going away party before she moved to Washingotn DC. We met a ton of new people over the weekend. Many of them in the cabin "club chill".



Sparklers

Howling Auld Lang Syne at our loop neighbors while their ball dropped


Double fisting some sparklers





(e:paul) had much time cuddled up in an 70 degree cabin.


We didn't get to hike much but there was a short colorful walk around the Red House lake.

Have you ever seen such a perfect snowflake?


Lots of campfire singing and dancing was attempted. Here is a story about mole ass. Jax is a pretty good storytell - I'll miss her!

::DOWNLOAD SOUND::

I can't sleep very well sometimes, so I take melatonin. if you ever want crazy dreams just take one, it's over the counter. You also will need someone to scrape you out of bed in 10 hours but that's secondary to the dreams. Here's an old review that discusses this. I take a fraction of a pill but its still twice the dosage of the first study it mentions.

The other night I had one of those dreams. I found myself in a fancy restaurant with the blond lady from friends. I've never even watched Friends but there she was. Anyway her friends were our table and confronting about her addiction to diet pills things got awkward so I snuck out to the bathroom, which turned out to be my parents house.

My mom was getting ready with my siblings to go to Oprah's Christmas party. we had to fly, so we boarded a plane outside.

In the sky we realized no one was flying at all. Then a man from India found out he controlled the plane via his brain, connected to a computer under his seat.

We crashed through Oprah's roof right when he realized it. we went up and down all through her attic before she shouted and pointed to a hole in the roof, which we made just in the nick of time.

After landing Oprah served all the passengers dinner. Unfortunately the meal had chicken in it and when I commented that I couldn't eat it, she scooped the chicken out with her hand and told me it was fine. Thanks, Oprah.

I woke up after my brother excused himself from the table to beat this bald man up who was sitting on the patio's porch. Weird.

Really Lebanese but (e:paul) and (e:terry) refer to it as Latvian.

Most of the dishes had beef in them (one of the dishes they eat is raw beef ::barf::) but the tabouleh and spinach pies were amazing.

















A weird drawing I did that I felt was better than my usual doodles. It's a long story, I used to tease my brother about.

(E:Iriesara) has been in town and came over to visit. This is the first time I met her and I have to say she is amazing. She reminds me of (e:Paul) a lot. I love confirming all the young Paul/her craziness i've heard with a first hand observer/participant.

(e:yesthatcasey), (e:flacidness) and (e:mike) were also over as well. We missed you (e:terry) ;( it was a real good time. Let's hold another get together on his return.



In the Ken West yearbook review. Can you believe this was okay for the class of 95 Kenmore West yearbook? Talk about young Republican. welfare out, orphanages in? Rush Limbaugh? WTF? On the next page it said bulimia out, binge drinking was in.