Big Sky Blog

PlumKrazzee has a wonderful post about personalized license plates, also known as “vanity plates.” Like her, I am convinced that Montana has more custom plates than any other state (per capita). She has some great examples, both good and bad. The best one I’ve seen here in GF is “ELKH8ME.” Any great plates that you’ve seen?

Test-driving the Google Video site and did a search for (duh) “Montana.” One of the results is a 53-second clip that will show-n-tell you, “…what a frozen Montana lake sounds like when the sunlight warms the ice and it begins to expand.” Neat! On the other hand, there is also a demonstration by a UM student (?) on how to properly ingest 40 ounces of alcohol quickly (but the background music is excellent!).

I came across this neat article, just in time for Halloween about all the supposedly haunted places in Montana. I really like reading things like this. My favorite thing was reading all about Bannock because I spent some time at Granite Ghost Town last November and found it fascinating.

Bannock – This is a ghost town and the grand hotel has an old woman ghost who haunts there. There is also a house where a lot of babies died in a cholera epidemic and they say you can still here the babies crying every now and then.

Bannock – Meade Hotel – The ghost of a woman is seen. Also a baby crying can be heard in this empty ghost town even when there are no children around.

Another thing I find fascinating is the Townsend Cornfield Maze. A bunch of my co-workers made the trip a while back–I couldn’t go because I was working. It looks really cool though.

What spooky things are going on in your neck of Montana?

I discovered just a few weeks ago that Montana has an monthly “newspaper” of arts & entertainment called “Lively Times.” I like the story about how Lively Times came to be:

Lively Times was created in 1993 by co-publishers Susan Bearse and Kristi Niemeyer. It was Sue’s big idea, really. She was missing too many great concerts around Montana because we had few ways of finding out what was happening beyond Charlo. Since both of us had spent many years in the weekly newspaper business, we decided to build our own paper and forge our own business.

The website is pretty great: you can enter your ZIP code and find out where you can pick up a dead-tree version; you can submit information about events; you can search for events in your area; and of course you can read news about music, books, theatre, and art. You can also advertise in Lively Times. Pretty nifty resource!

Found a nifty new theme that some of you may enjoy here at Big Sky Blog – it’s called “News Time.” It presents this site in a sorta “newspaper”-like format. Click here to see it in action. If you don’t like it, just use the Theme Switcher over on the sidebar to go back to the regular “Journalized Sand” theme. So what do you think…do you like it? Is it more in tune with the “feel” of Big Sky Blog?

With help from other Montana bloggers, there is a large list of Big Sky Bloggers located right here, created using Blogrolling. There’s new additions to the roll every few weeks, so be sure to click through and check ‘em out. The newest YAMB is none other than Wulfgars brother, Moorcat. Welcome him to the Big Sky Blogosphere!

Dave Budge is laying the groundwork for an official Big Sky Blogger Bash! OK, it could also be called a “Montana Meet-Up,” or even the “Montana Wild Food Cook-Off,” but the point is: let’s get a whole buncha bloggers together in one place, share some foodstuffs and beverages, and have a good time. And we may even do some charitable good by our bash:

Hell, we could even make it a fundraiser for some mutually agreed upon conservation cause (I’m partial to the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation.)

We’ve had a couple of small gatherings, in Bozeman and Billings, but this one has the makings of a BIG Bash! The tentative location: Missoula. Projected date: June or July 2006. Plenty of time to block your calendars, so e-mail Dave or drop a comment at his place!

Listening to NPR several weeks ago I was amused to hear the tale of a Hurricane Katrina evacuee in Houston who was being wooed by a Colorado “recruiter.” The evacuee quickly backed away, stating that it’s too cold and it always snows in Colorado, and opted instead to relocate to Florida. Heh…I’m sure we can imagine what that person must think of Montana!

No, not the Shirley Jackson story; I’m talking about the Montana Lottery (can’t you hear the radio jingle in your head when you read those two words?). The jackpot for Saturday’s drawing is now in the $290 million range; quite a chunk-o-change, ever after taxes & the lump-sum option. Hearing all the commercials got me wondering: how many of you play the lottery? How often — always, sometimes, rarely, never? I buy a “scratch-n-sniff” ticket about once or twice each year, just on a whim, and always select a ticket with a humorous or animal theme. Haven’t bought a “numbers” lottery ticket in several years, which means that I have a 0% chance of winning…and as my stats prof once told me, “The less you bet, the more you lose when you win.”

Well, not quite, but you could have fooled a lot of people yesterday! Many places got their first snowfall of the season yesterday — take a look at how much was reported down in & around Billings! Lots of snow and power outages in the eastern plains, too. Ed puts things in perspective by comparing Saturday weather with Tuesday’s weather.
UPDATE: Sarpy Sam has a couple of great pix!
2nd UPDATE: Sam has even more pictures – including this wonderful snapshot of antelope bounding through the snow!