March 22
Another no-gaming day. Keeping going until 2AM makes it hard to fit a good bout of gaming in.

March 23
That's more like it. I got several summer days under my belt today and should be on to fall tomorrow. I ran around, gave free produce to villagers, succeeded in one cut scene while getting a mixed result in another, and generally ran my poor guy ragged.

The big new thing I did was link up my GBA Harvest Moon to the GameCube one, and I don't know what I was expecting to happen but that wasn't it. First you go to the path leading out of the valley, talk to the sprites who will prevent you from leaving, go the the link setup screen, and fire up your GBA. Then, in the GBA version, you go the Harvest Goddess, answer "yes" to a question that should be answered "no" due to a stupid typo, and data is exchanged. You get a star rating in each on "connectivity strength," whatever that means, and new things are supposed to open up in each game. I've only run across a new section of books in the GBA's library, but hopefully as I link up again I'll get more from each game. For some reason I was expecting my GameCube guy to wander around the GBA game, and maybe bring home new toys. Oh well, yet another thing to experiment with more as I get deeper in.

Everyone in town has something he likes, and although experimenting with different things hasn't yielded much in the way of results yet, I'm hoping that will change as time goes by. There's one kid, though, who I can't for the life of me figure out what to give - Rock. He's the white-boy partying "son" of the Asian couple running the inn, and though there's a story there, I don't have it yet. One of the things I'm starting to notice as I get more familiar with the surroundings is that there seem to be a couple of plots hidden in here. Villagers are starting to say more than the equivalent of "Hi, good morning," and I'm curious to see who's got what to say. I somehow doubt it's going to lead to a Children of the Corn scenario that can only be defeated by my horde of cow-riding chickens, but there's always hope.

"All along, along there were incidents and accidents there were hints and allegations." - Paul Simon

March 24
She said yes!

So I proposed to Nami, most likely breaking poor Muffy and Celia's fragile little hearts, and she accepted.

*spoiler* *spoiler* *spoiler*

When I gave Nami the Blue Feather (the item used to propose to the girl of your dreams in the Harvest Moon series) it switched to a cut scene in her room at the inn. After she agrees, what does my hard-working farmer get? Nothing! Not even a hug, and certainly not a night to remember. Gotta preserve that E rating I suppose, but I still feel bad for the guy.

*end spoiler* *end spoiler* *end spoiler*

Other than that, it's now fall. Wild mushrooms grow all over the place, including matsutake, which as any Iron Chef fan knows is king of the mushroom world. The scarcer mushrooms grow once every other day, so I'm storing them in the cooler and using the more common ones that grow daily as my midday snacks.

Speaking of the cooler, I may have created a problem for myself with it. There's a villager called Morrie who's a little . . . odd. He's a beggar, and the first time I found him in my food storage area I let him keep what he found out of pity. Well, it turns out he's come back for a second helping now, and though he doesn't take much it's still kind of aggravating. On the other hand, he's so wretched I can't really hold it against him. My guy's response when he caught him sums it up perfectly - he just stood there rolling his eyes with his tongue sticking out.

March 25
Busy busy busy. I'll play tomorrow.

March 26
Or maybe twice as much the day after?

Continue to: Days 6 and 7