I’ve talked to my mom on the phone, so today’s update on my progress is just going to cover what I’ve accomplished in the game since our last conversation.

First off, I managed to complete two more dungeons. The first of which I seriously hated. It was the ice temple. Apparently water in both its liquid and solid states is just not my element. The lovely new weapon/tool I acquired and needed to use to defeat the boss is a ridiculously huge mace, or ball and chain. Link looks like he’s going to collapse under the weight of it or at least develop an unpleasant hernia whenever he uses it.

The worst part of the snowy region, other than the fact that some of the enemies are total pains, is the need to snowboard in order to actually get to the location of the dungeon. You know my trouble of running in a straight line? Well, snowboarding multiplies my coordination deficiencies by about ten. I didn’t bother to even try counting the number of times I went sailing of the edge of a cliff, which I might add, is a lot more difficult to do than you might think since there aren’t just a ton of cliffs to fall off of. There is a short cut on the snowboard course, I just can’t seem to find the way to actually get on it. It might help if I stopped running into things and getting knocked off while looking for it. To add a cherry to the top of all the craziness, I’m positive I can get another heart piece by racing and winning against two yetis. Unfortunately at the rate I go, this may never happen since it took me half an hour of attempts yesterday to actually finish the course and beat the first yeti. I have a feeling I may need to find and successfully navigate the shortcut if I want to beat the other yeti.

The second dungeon I completed was in that sacred grove of trees. I had to follow that same kid and fight off his weird tree-dwelling puppet friends again to get there. However, I did manage to find the female snail which completed my set and snagged me an even larger wallet.

The tool I received this time is called the Dominion Rod. It’s basically a magic wand that glows green when activated and allows me to play “follow the leader” with statues. I’m the leader of course. I did have a little trouble in the dungeon. Partially because I had to save and quit after I was more than halfway through. Which meant that when I sat down to play again, all the enemies I had killed were back again and the statue I had been moving around went back to its original position. Having to do everything over again did not put me in the best of moods. And then twice I yelled for Paul to come in and lend me his eyes. The first time it turned out was unnecessary because when I went to demonstrate something that didn’t work, it suddenly worked beautifully. The second time I was getting tired and the solution was so simple, I just couldn’t see it.

Anyway, I’m on my way to another dungeon to collect the final piece of mirror. I finally have my own cannon. Although I don’t get to use it to blow things up, instead I get to pretend to be the Amazing Flying Gonzo. Also I have 55 of the 60 poes. I’ve learned all the hidden skills. I finally acquired a way to call my horse without having to look for that stupid grass, even though it’s a little late in the game to give me something that would have been a major convenience much earlier on. It’s fairly unnecessary now since I can pretty much warp anywhere. I now have 16 heart containers. I’m pretty sure there are 20 altogether in the game, but if I can’t win that stupid race then I may just have to settle for 19.