We built a snowman tonight. Elaine's height, carrot-nosed, and sporting red grapes for eyes. And while we worked, we sang a cheerful song about zombies, by Jonathan Coulton. Only, just as we sang, "All we want to do is eat your brains," well...

It turned out that someone did want to eat his eyes.

The Floor People were very egalitarian about it. Elaine ate the left eye; Trudy the right. Dale munched on the poor snowman's nose, and then eventually moved on to directly gnawing on the snow of his face. Yes, Dale is a dog who will eat your face. If it's made out of snow.

Every spare minute is devoted to spaceship repair. The hull is sound now. Tomorrow I may cut holes in it, so I can see the inky, black space outside.

I made preliminary repairs to the spaceship hull today. Tomorrow I buy more duct tape.

Draft three feels like it's breezing by. Working from a marked up manuscript is much easier than forging through on my own, without a page by page critique from a skilled editor. In this case, the editor is my sister, and having her spend the last week reading my novel has been amazingly fun. There should always be someone sitting on the other side of the room, reading one of my manuscripts and laughing at the right parts.

Another fun thing this week has been singing with Elaine. She was walking around the other night chanting, "ba, ba, ba." She'd seen some bicycles and was trying to say "bike," but it got "Barbara Ann" stuck in my head. So I started singing. Fortunately, "Barbara Ann" seems to be pretty easy to sing, and having Elaine sing along is adorable.

"Are you a dog?"
-- "Woof."
"Are you a chicken?"
-- "Bock."
"Are you a kitten?"
-- "Mow."
"Are you an owl?"
-- "Hooo."
"Well, you're all kinds of animals!"
-- "Yi-ai-ai-ai."

Velociraptors. In hot air balloons. With flamethrowers. Hunting seagulls. Barbecue sauce at the ready.

Time for draft three! Well... Probably time for a break where I work on short stories and my other novel. Then time for draft three.