Inverter Power and the Boogie Man

It was too cold today to work for money so I worked around the house. I cleaned up the carport considerably, and got a better vision of how to set up the water heater and peripherals, including a firepit for testing a heat converter that I built out of 20' of 1/4" copper tubing.
I found a small piece of extension cord in the yard with the male end still attached. I fitted a second male plug to the other end and then used the resulting cord to plug a 12v inverter into the outdoor outlet on the porch. I turned the inverter on and nothing blew up (yeah!) and then opened the front door and turned the lights on (presto). Curiously nothing seemed to work outside of the living room circuit, so I'll look into that another time -- probably on another phase of the bus.
While gathering firewood from the nearby woods, I met a neighbor who was also gathering wood. He was quite curious, without coming straight out about it, as to what I was doing at the house. Two nights ago someone drove past, turned around, sat up the hill looking at the house for about 5 minutes then drove into the driveway. As soon as I turned on the headlights on my van, they quickly left. Security has been on a little higher alert since then (what does that mean?), so it's nice to have some working lights and wood for the fireplace. I also happened to use some scaffolding to reach the exaust vent upstairs to plug it so that the warm air will have a chance of staying in the house if I actually light up the fireplace and spend some time inside the house instead of the van.