Tonight, I shut it down around 9pm because my battery was dying. The picture is from tonight, when I briefly enjoyed an All-Girl Open Gate Night: Lilly, Cameron and Marci.

I'm still fielding friend requests... so the unfortunate truth is that I have to cycle out names to meet new people. As Cutter informed me, if I drop your name from my Friend List but you still have me on yours... then you can SEE my open town but you can't enter it. That's actually a bit rude, Nintendo.

So anyway, if you can't get in, that might be the reason. I'm keeping track of every code, so it might just take another email in a few weeks to get you back in. Just trying to get everybody a shot at it.

But actually, once you've visited Adamsvil for a couple weeks, there isn't that much else to do. Since the chat feature is so gimpy, it's difficult to hold an actual conversation. And unless you're showing up with cheated items (for shame!), there's probably not a lot of useful item-sharing to be done. It's starting to seem to me like starting players get the most out of WiFi play. Once you've got a fairly solid catalog, why bother? Because you like writing letters to animals you've already seen in your town but mysteriously have never heard of you here? Oh, right, we're supposed to be racing to catch fish or playing tag.

Before this devolves into a bitch about the utter lack of true multiplayer game features, let's move on to the good news. Like Cameron showing off her four-leaf clover.

Nook built another room for my house, bringing me up to two rooms off the main floor living area. So far, it's looking like a completed Snowman Series in the leftmost room, a theme-less mess in the big middle room, and a Fatal Frame room (the Japan theme sets) in the righthand room. The second floor remains devoted to the Western theme. According to last month's HRA score, I'm veering very close to the 100,000 point level.

Got my golden watering can, the result of a "perfect" town for 16 days. Or so. This is just the internet talking, because the strategy guide certainly isn't going to cover it. I followed the prevalent suggestion and marked my town off into 16x16 acres, and then kept 12-13 trees and 3-5 flowers inside each acre. The other benefit to perfection is the appearance of wild Jacob's Ladder flowers, which I've been giving away on Open Gate night.

I'm still trying to figure out the draconian rules that govern random animal appearances. Apparently, Tortimer's presence is enough to keep Sow Joan from showing up, because she never appeared during the end of last Sunday's Bright Nights holiday. (Another reason to hate holidays.) According to the useless guide, Lyle and KK show up on every Saturday (true), it's Joan on Sunday morning, and everybody else is restricted to Monday through Friday. I'm fairly certain that Katie inhibits other guests from showing up while she's waiting for you to take her to another town, which is lousy play. I'm no longer convinced that Blanca doesn't do the same, because I've only ever seen her double-up with Lyle on Saturdays, and Lyle seems to be a hell-or-high-water kind of character (like KK).

By the way, the other day I read that Nintendo is working on an Animal Crossing game for the Revolution. I guess that's been everybody's assumption for some time now, but it was nice to hear it sorta verified. I'm working on a list of demands.