After I came home from Columbia Mall the day before yesterday, I took my new unicorn and the laptop to a local coffeehouse that has high-speed wireless Internet since I'm on dial-up at home. I plugged the laptop into a wall outlet (since the battery situation was still messed up) and logged into Webkinz.com.
I signed up for an free account where I had to go to Ms. Birdy's Adoption Center, pick out a User ID, and punch in the special code that was printed inside my unicorn's hang tag. The site determined that I had purchased a unicorn so I all I needed to do was specify a name and gender.
Since my unicorn had embroidered eyes with long eyelashes, pink inner ears, and an irredesent pink color that shimmered through the unicorn's horn and hooves, I decided that my unicorn was a female. Then it was time for a name. Lately my husband, who's a total Bruce Springsteen nut, has been playing The Boss' latest CD, Magic, nearly non-stop in his car for the past several weeks since it was released. So I decided to name the unicorn "Magic". After all, unicorns have long been regarded in folklore and myths as being magical beings, right?
After the registration, I received this adoption certificate that was signed by Ms. Birdy herself.
I was also given a biography of my newly adopted pet.
Note the sentence "One of my best friends is a yellow Lab." Is this some kind of subliminal message that I should consider buying a yellow Lab Webkinz in the future as a pal for Magic?
I went to my new pet's room where I saw this screen:
I saw in the "My Stuff" list (located at the bottom of the screen) that I was immediately given a gift-wrapped present and a few food items. I went to Magic and her room and I saw that it was empty. I poked around the shopping mall part and I found that I would need to buy furniture and that would require Webkinz cash. While I did have some Webkinz money as part of the initial registration, I would have to earn more.
At the same time I realized that I forgot to bring the Webkinz bookmark with me so I couldn't use the code that came with it so that'll have to wait for another day. So I had to look for other ways of earning Webkinz money.
I went to the employment agency and I got a job where I had to assemble burgers in a certain order within a certain time frame. The job was over in a few minutes and I was given cash for my efforts. (If only jobs in the real world were this short, easy, and profitable.)
I also went to the arcade where I played something called "Stack'Em Up Solitaire". This game was slightly different from the version of Solitaire that I've known since I was a child but I managed to clear enough of the cards to earn some more Webkinz cash.
I also decided to try my hand at "Quizzy's WhizKinz" quiz game. I picked the all-ages level then selected the "Green Thumb" category because of my past interest in gardening. Here's a sample of the questions that I was given.
Some of the questions were pretty hard, such as the one that asked, "Which vegetable is a member of the Nightshade family?" (The answer is "potato".) Actually the questions are pretty educational and this quiz game could be beneficial to children for that reason.
I managed to collect enough Webkinz cash to do some shopping in the shopping mall. All I could afford at that moment was a simple bed and a chair, which was placed in the "My Stuff" list once I paid for the items. I went to Magic's room where I spent most of the time figuring out how to move furniture from the "My Stuff" list to the room. After several unsuccessful tries, I figured out that you have to click on the item, them drag it into the room very slowly. If you drag too fast, the furniture will drop back into the "My Stuff" list and you have to start all over again. I also had a hard time moving the furniture once I placed it in the room but I decided that I wanted it in a different location in the room. Ultimately I had to move it back into the "My Stuff" list then re-drag it into the place I wanted the furniture item to go.
The easiest part of interacting with my pet was feeding her some food. All I had to do was drag the food item from the "My Stuff" list to a picture of Magic located in the bottom left corner of the screen. A bubble comes up where she expresses her happiness at being fed while her Love, Happiness, and Health meters go up.
It was time for me to leave the coffeehouse and go home so I had Magic go to her new bed where she fell asleep and a cartoon balloon with "ZZZZZZ" popped up over her head. I was given reminders to always log out when I had to quit for the day because failure to do so will cause the Love, Happiness, and Health meters to run down to zero.
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