An unfortunate side effect of the graduation trip was all the women
caught a very bad cold.
Strangely,
the ailment did not seem to affect the men.
Pauline spent all of Christmas day in bed and we broke our family
activities into several small events spread over the Christmas to New
Year's break.
Gary and Brandon took a road trip to pick up a new car
(see Sidebars below).
In this photo,
Xue and Pauline enjoy a short evening walk on Mission Bay on New Year's
eve.
Just before the New Year we got permission from SDG&E to put our solar
panels online –
just in time to get a federal tax credit for 2018.
The panels should generate almost as much power as we use on average but
we do not have energy storage so during the middle of the day we pump
excess energy back into the grid.
That means we typically don't take energy off the grid during the hours
demand on it is at peak,
we get credit for the energy we put into the grid,
and we get lower rates for electricity from the grid we use during
“off peak”
hours.
