A sunny day today. The high was 84˚F, with a heat index of 85˚F. I was more productive than yesterday. I made a decent start to the phylogenetics discussion section of MP2, trying to make sense of the 30 most parsimonious trees produced by my PAUP4 analysis last weekend. And I wrote my "appreciation" piece on Peter Straub for Locus . The problem, the worst problem besides the inherent sadness of the task, is writing only 500 words. I'll send it off to Tim Pratt tomorrow, after I read it a few more times. Oh, and the proofreading and editing on Bradbury Weather is essentially finished...unless I decide to read over A Barrenness of Daffodils, a Lerna of Ills one last time. Even if I do, it's awfully close to done. Oh, and I'm back at work on Winifred the Tylosaur. The jacket with the posterior lower left jaw has sat neglected for months. I got back to it a few days ago. I'm using dilute formic acid to remove some of the harder matrix that was slowing things down so much. This afternoon I saw a really excellent document on Phil Tippett. I was fortunate enough to be introduced to Tippett by the late paleoartist Dan Varner (when Dan and I were working on a never to be realized mosasaur book) during the 1988 meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology in Drumheller, Alberta. There was a "secret" showing of Tippett's Prehistoric Beast (1985) in one of the hotel rooms, and I'm sure I fawned and made an utter dork of myself. But...man, Phil Tibbett. Oh, and I watched an episode of Nova on volcanology. Tomorrow evening, most likely, those three issues of Sirenia Digest that contain the serialization of Living a Boy's Adventure Tale (Nos. 97, 98, 99) will be removed from the Big Cartel shop . So do not say you were not warned. Later Tater Beans, Aunt Beast 2:12 p.m.