Illness + Ping Pong + Zelda

I have had an awful sore throat all day and I'm feeling very fatigued right now. I will try to fight it, but people have been getting sick around here the last couple of weeks and I think I may have finally succumbed. (I started feeling a little bit bad physically a few weeks ago, but it was thankfully a false alarm, as I felt fine the next morning.) Sigh...

I played ping pong today because I needed to skip last week to go to the Alison Moyet concert (about which I'll blog at some point) and I didn't want to skip two weeks in a row. I actually played pretty well despite how crappy I felt, and I did well against challenging competitors. A couple of the people I played today are particularly good practice opponents for me because their style of play forces me not to get overaggressive (by trying to kill a shot instead of just applying pressure to get a better shot the next time). Hence, playing them helps me develop better playing habits in general. They also often hit the ball to my backhand, and I have noticed that I have been getting a bit more consistent with my backhand as a result of practicing against them. (Well, my opponents tend to hit to my backhand so that they don't have to face the wrath of my forehand loop, but today was doing a couple of reasonable backhand loops, which is something I need to practice. My backhand needs to be stronger simply so that I can get more forehand shots and kill people with those.)

I also almost beat Zelda: Twilight Princess last night. Unfortunately, I had some trouble with the final battle against Ganon/Ganondorf and I ultimately died. My eyes and hands were tired, so I didn't try a second time yesterday. I'll try again in a week or so---I think I will take a break from Zelda and play some Super Paper Mario in the intervening time---but I am finally almost done with the game. It's about time too, as a couple of my students now keep asking me every week where I am in the game (and have now started asking me if I've finished). I feel like I can't let them down and I don't want to disappoint them by letting this game linger even longer than I already have. (I'm also planning to do the game's "Cave of Ordeals" before I start focusing on other games, though I may need to wait until spring break to do that because I suspect it might take several hours of real time to go through the whole thing. I probably will not bother getting all the special fighting moves, though one of my students tells me that those will really come in handy for the Cave of Ordeals. If I fail without those, I might go ahead and get those. I'm not going to bother collecting all the poes and golden bugs because that just isn't a good use of my time. I have OCD in numerous aspects of my life, but for the most part it doesn't extend to video games. I just don't get much enjoyment out of collecting everything in a game for its own sake.)