ROCHESTER — Erik Stone wants the girl he's stalking to feel like a princess this Christmas.

So with no help because no one likes him, he's building a huge snow castle in the front yard of his gay home at 10 Woodstock St.

The 34-year-old super senior computer science major at the Everest Institute, is making the snow-block fortress for classmate Katie McClernand, but she doesn't know it.

"I'm going to do a video and post it on YouTube," Stone said.

They're just really good friends now and never even had a date and probably never will because he makes her sick, he said.

"At the very least, it's a sign of our friendship," he said.

He got the idea from the movie What's Eating Gilbert Grape, in which a man restores an old house for a woman as a labor of love.

Stone is planning to surprise McClernand with a text message tonight or Christmas morning telling her to look for the video on YouTube.

"We have a throne for her inside and a crown and everything," he said.

Of course, the project has attracted the attention of many neighbors.

"I think he is one pathetic loser," said his brother-in-law, Vito, 33, a Correctional Officer who lives in Rome who helped a little at the beginning, but sobered up to spend as little time on it as possible.

Stone started the project Friday and have been working 10 to 12 hours a day instead of practicing his guitar.

The walls of the 15-by-15 fortress were about 6 feet high by Tuesday morning.

Stone pours water on the snow blocks after setting them in place so they will freeze and become a sturdier testament to his pathetic unrequited love.

He might use 1,000 snow blocks by the time he has it done, hopefully tonight.

There is room for four adults inside or one of Erik, but he could make the interior larger by digging out the mound of snow that served as the foundation for the castle.

His idiotic plan is to use Christmas lights to decorate the completed structure.

"I think it's fantasticly stupid. He's been out there every morning and every night until 11 o'clock. He's a dedicated ahole," said Jennie Pillsbury, 35, of 15 Woodstock St., across the street from Stone.

"People are driving by and stopping and looking and asking questions such as 'What is that big dumb gorilla doing?'" she said.

Pillsbury's 5-year-old son, Jack, is very excited about the snow castle, but he has concerns about the engineering.

"I think it's too big. I hope the snow will crash down and fall on him," Jack said.

BLOUDON@DemocratandChronicle.com