I don't know what I was thinking through most of the middle game. I shouldn't have won this one, but my opponent gave it away towards the end.

I wish I could tell chess.com to ignore this one in my ratings. I got a 30 point bump from this train wreck.

The opening was not terribly convincing either; 7...g6? is truly bad, a serious and unnecessary weakening of your king position, made worse by the fact that your DSB was gone (also exchanging it as you did with 4...Bb4+?! feels antipositional to me, it was certainly a better piece than his white counterpart). he blundered badly on the next moves; 14...e5 looks fine to me, it's just the follow up which makes things bad. 15...Bf5 for example seems safe enough, completing development and offering exchanges while keeping a sound extra pawn. 24.Nxe5 does not deserve question marks. The pawn ending which arises if he takes the  rook is dead won for black; at least 24.Nxe5 keeps material on the board and was his "best" chance to play on, although no doubt 24.resign would have been even more appropriate.

Overall, of course it's a badly played game as you said, for both sides, but you shouldn't be too hard with yourself. Everyone has an off day from time to time, and when it happens winning is an excellent result regardless of the quality of the play :P

Well, g6 did have some purpose. Both his knight and his bishop were lined up on the h7 pawn. I took the position that h7 g6 f7 was better than nothing on the h file at all. Maybe not the best in general, but in this game I don't think it hampered me too much.

I totally agree on the bishop trade. Unnecessary and not good for me.

On the e5 move that I questioned, once he moved h5, there was no way to prevent him busting through on the h file without some serious positional compromises, which is what I ended up with in the bishop on h5 and his pawn on f3. Had I played h5 there instead, his idea would have been stopped

You're right on knight takes pawn verses pawn takes rook ending for white. I let chessmaster 10 duke it out from there and black checkmated white in 22 moves with pawn takes rook ending (which chessmaster preferred) and 23 moves with the knight takes pawn ending. Both equally bad for white.

Thanks for the feedback.