After Christmas, Skye gave her best effort to try to explain Webkinz World to me.  Oak and I got her a webkinz pig for Christmas that she named James (I think an attempt to name it after Oak by using his middle name).  It was all pretty complicated – playing games to earn money so you can buy food, toys, etc. for your pets to keep them happy.

Virtual pets and I have a bad history.  Sometime in high school (perhaps circa 1997) I had a tamagotchi – one of those little keychain pets that you have to care for and feed. Sure, my little dinosaur survived for awhile, until I forgot about him for a few days and had to reset the game.  By the way, my dinosaur took possibly the largest bowel movements ever – they were seriously the size of his body.

As if she didn’t remember my failure as a tamagotchi mother, my mom got me a furby as a gift in college.   I was so excited to receive a package at the school post office, until the post office worker informed me that my package was… talking.  No kidding.  There was a live furby inside.  Well, the furby-ness went well for awhile.  I learned furbish, how to tickle its belly, and how to play games.  Then, one day I had to go to class while it was awake.  I left the furby (his name was Toe-Loo… as he told me) with Allan as a babysitter.  When I got back to my room later that day, Toe-Loo was sitting outside of my dorm room door.  Still talking.

So, imagine my delight when you can have a completely passive, lazy virtual pet experience on iGoogle.  I set all my site feeds up on there (so I can check all the blogs I read without actually visiting the sites to see if there’s anything new), and you can customize the banner for each tab you set up on your page.  My favorite is this little kitten, who can be seen doing different things throughout the day, such as tending to her garden, entertaining friends, and eating with chopsticks.  So cute.  And I don’t have to worry about killing her!  Ding.  Oak has a monster that we also enjoy checking on every once in awhile.  Get your own virtual pet today!

Posted by Carrie on Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Categories: culture, website · 4 Comments »