well, I'm out there working on the car today, and it's in the low 20;s which feels like summer compared to last night

I checked the freeze plugs and from what I can see, they all seem to be in place, though I can't see the two rearmost ones on the intake side.. Are there only 4 of them?

I've got a quartz heater underneath the engine right now. I've had to find a place to put it where it wouldn't get dripped on (there's a lot of ice on the engine now from where I had been pouring hot water into places like the tstat housing and the water pump outlet). it's heating up the bottom of the engine quite nicely, and I scrounged up a 150 watt floodlamp that I have pointed straight at the tsat area.

Took a peek at the timing belt, though I couldn't get te cover off all the way. I don't know if there's a trick to getting it off (it seems wedged under the water pump pulley, but what I can see it look intact.. I havent' tried to turn the engine over yet to see if it goes.. I'm sorta waiting to get the block thawed out before that. From what I can see of the timing belt it looks ok.. I might get a big socket and breaker bar on the crankshaft and turn it manually instead.

I'm really regretting not draining out the fluid and changing the radiator earlier, especially considering that it took me all of 30 seconds to remove the radiator.

So maybe I'm ok with the block.. Once the coolant starts to drip out of the water pump outlet (and hopefully the coolant drain in the block, which is now open, but so far nothing's dripping out) I might give it a crank to see if it's still turning the camshaft. If the block is ok, I'm mostly worried about freezing in the heater core, but maybe if I'm really lucky, maybe there was more antifreeze in that part of the system.. I'm guessing that in the car, maybe there was no more than 5 to 10% antifreeze to the rest water. I also wonder if antifreeze is heavier than water, and if it would more likely settle to the bottom of the system, maybe also saving the block and heater core.