I hope you’re all having a wonderful Halloween. I’ve had a fun day. One of my favorite things about working at Google is that people really get into holidays, celebrations and even slightly offbeat special occasions. Lots of people dressed up today and we had a great party at lunch. One of the costume contests was “best team costume” and the Webmaster Tools team won! We all dressed up with a theme of “80s pop culture.”

I was a Rubik’s Cube. I came up with the idea on my own, but after I’d decided to build it, I found that several other people have done very similar costumes in the past. Fred Benenson’s appears to be the most famous, but this guy (whose name I can’t find) has a great photo set of his process of building an improved version.

Their instructions were helpful, but I was in a bit of a time crunch — I’d finally figured out my costume idea Monday afternoon, and didn’t get home with the materials until after 7:30 Monday night. Becky and I worked on it until about 1:30 AM. Tuesday night I had improv, so I didn’t get home until 10:30. We finished building the costume a bit after midnight. So I didn’t really have the opportunity to implement some of the more elaborate elements of the other designs, and I didn’t get the chance to correct a few errors I made. But I think it turned out really well. It’s mostly made out of black foam core board, with lots and lots of hot glue holding it together. Hot glue is even better than duct tape.

Amanda was Rainbow Brite — an amazing costume she made herself! Nish was Mr. T. By the way, this photo was taken by the team tiki bar. What a great place to work ;-)

Here’s the whole group of us after winning the contest.

I suppose I can’t end this without mentioning Matt’s LOLCat costume. Truly excellent.

Happy Halloween!

Update: Check out some of the other costumes from the global Google webmaster teams on the Official Google Webmaster Central Blog!