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I love inventing a costume for Halloween and then dressing up for parties or trick-or-treaters or just to go to the office. I’m pretty proud of a few of my latest creations: the Dread Pirate Roberts and Doc Brown, or even the more generic hippie and plain old pirate.

Alex and his work cohorts all dressed up as ghetto Marvel superheroes, and some of their costumes are so bad they’re good. He sent this picture:

Sadly, we don’t yet know enough people in the area to throw a party, I don’t have an office to go to, and there’s zero chance of trick-or-treaters coming to our house. So I was kind of bummed that I wouldn’t get to wear anything fun. But then Pepper discovered that Bigfork has an annual Halloween event on the main street, Electric Avenue (yes, insert 80’s reference joke here). All the local businesses hand out candy to trick-or-treaters.

So I donned my pirate hat and dressed all in black, and Pepper dug out a witch hat, and we headed downtown.

It was a chilly evening, but there was a huge crowd. Hundreds of families were walking along the shops getting candy, and we managed to score some as well. My favorite costumes were this couple, dressed as Bert and Mary Poppins:

So Halloween wasn’t a total bust. Afterward we went out to a little Italian restaurant to wrap up the evening.

I told Pepper that next year we’re definitely throwing a big party.

A few days ago, we had about three inches of snow fall in the area. When Pepper and I went outside for a walk, we saw some tracks in our front yard. One set was definitely from a wild turkey:

The other set looked like a large dog made them:

Since it’s incredibly unlikely a regular dog made its way up the mountain into our yard, I’m guessing these are wolf tracks. They’re too big to be coyote, and not shaped right for a bear.

We also saw some deer tracks along the driveway, and of course a few smaller critters (squirrels and rabbits, probably). It appears we have quite the menagerie of animals in our yard…

It was barely a week ago that I posted a picture of a beautiful sunset across the lake. Well, tonight Pepper and I were sitting in the office and glanced out the window. Here’s what we saw:

I can’t get enough of these…

After a cloudy grey day, we were rewarded with a beautiful sunset tonight.

I’ve never really liked doing electrical work, and that was reinforced lately when I attempted to install some motion-sensor switches only to fail utterly (partly because the switches sucked). But my to-do list isn’t getting shorter, so today I rolled up my sleeves and went to work. I installed some dimmer switches, which are really nice in certain areas and generally simple to install.

Then I then headed to the garage. In there we have ten eight-foot fluorescent bulbs in gigantic baffles, all sucking down a huge amount of power whenever we turn on the garage lights. Of course I have to change them all to LEDs. Unlike the other bulbs throughout the house, it’s not as simple as just replacing the bulbs… I had to remove the fluorescent power supplies and bypass them. After a bit of reading online and a YouTube video or two, I was ready. I went to work and a little over an hour later, our garage was lit with LEDs.

(Shout out to Pepper, who spent some time today organizing the garage, which until today had been kind of a mess with all our moving stuff. Also shout out to Thom, who suggested I buy wire cutters and a live-wire tester, both of which are turning out to be tremendously useful.)

These lights are amazing. Not only are they crazy bright, but you can rotate the bulbs to throw light in specific directions (unlike fluorescents, which waste a lot of light shining upward). So I turned them for better coverage, and the result looks great.

Despite my general incompetence at electrical projects, I feel like I’m gradually getting the hang of them. Pretty soon I’ll be an expert!

Yesterday, Pepper and I went to the Big K (aka Kalispell) to see a movie, do some shopping, and enjoy dinner together. Since all of the restaurants are basically new to us, we have to just test them one by one to find the good ones. We chose an Italian place. It was awesome.

They even had real flowers on the table, which happened to match her pullover!

Despite our new mailbox, it’s still tricky to find our house, so we’re thinking of ideas about something we could put alongside the road as a landmark. Pepper mused that we could get a life-size Easter Island statue and just tell people to “turn at the big head”. Of course you can buy such a thing:

Unfortunately they’re around a thousand bucks, which is more than I’d like to spend to help people find the house…

A few days ago, the temperature was almost 60, so we decided to take the jet skis out one last time before winterizing them. Although it was cloudy, the sun peeked through now and then to make it a beautiful fall day. Considering it’s mid-October, we counted ourselves lucky to get out on the water. And since the wind was calm, the water was really smooth.

The other times we’d been out, the water was choppy and we were forced to “wave hop”, not getting much above 20mph. This time we could really open the throttles; I topped out at 43mph while Pepper managed to get to 47mph (her jet ski is slightly upgraded compared with mine).

We crossed the lake to the western shore and stopped in at Wild Horse Island, which is the largest island on Flathead Lake and home to (surprise!) wild horses. Most of the island is a state park, although there are some private residences along the shore. We went on a short hike.

We also cruised past Cromwell Island, just to the west. It’s completely private and the owner has an enormous mansion (visible on the far right):

It was a blast to cruise across such beautifully smooth water. I’m glad we had one last opportunity before it’s too cold, and I’m excited for the spring season when we can get our toys out again.

It’s official. Ben and Rachel came up with my all-time favorite Halloween costumes this year.

For those heathens who don’t recognize these two, it’s Tom Bombadil and his wife Goldberry, from The Lord of the Rings. Tom is an enigmatic character who is as awesome as he is confusing. And honestly, Ben is the only person I know who could pull this off so well.

I admit, it was a little weird to move into a house that didn’t have a mailbox. I guess I kind of figured everyone has a mailbox, but in this case, the former owner didn’t. That meant when we’d give directions to our house, we’d have to say things like “our driveway is across the street from the red van”. Yes, the red van. But a couple weeks ago, the red van– which had been parked there literally since March– was gone! So now our directions became, “our driveway is across the street from the mailbox that has a lawnmower sitting on it”. Yes, a lawnmower. Sitting on the mailbox.

But finally we bought a mailbox and a post. We talked with George, our mailman, and had the utility companies spray-paint the area so we know where the conduits are, and installed an honest-to-goodness mailbox.

Now maybe we can tell people “it’s 20826” and that’ll be good enough.