IT'S Hallowe'en time in Webkinz World: you can tell from the opening screen that went up a few weeks ago:
Not to mention the Hallowe'en things for sale in the W Shop.
Even the trivia questions for October had been building up to this picture:
This morning when one logged on, there was a Hallowe'en gift bag in your dock:
And when you logged into your room, you had KinzMail...a card!
When you opened your Hallowe'en bag, you got the first three foods, seen in the dock (the other two foods were given out at the fall festival). Maple LaMarsh, my Pet du jour, models the fourth gift, a Frankenstein's monster head.
And now here's Maple, changed into the bee costume being given away courtesy clicks on ads for The Bee Movie, sitting in the Autumn Acres pumpkin patch—"sincerity as far as the eye can see!"—waiting for the Great Pumpkin.
I never liked dolls or dressing them up, and I really don't dress my virtual Webkinz except for little shirts, so did not plan to buy any of the costumes, but James brought home a witch costume for Harry, which I think is adorable as a decoration, so here's Harry downstairs in the foyer waiting for Hallowe'en night on top of our "Great Pumpkin."
"Trick or Treat, Smell My Feet, Give Me Something Good to Eat..."
A Name from the Past
I activated my German Shepherd yesterday. There's a bit of history behind his name.
We lived between two small libraries when I was small; the big central Cranston library on Sockanossett Road had not been built yet. Both of these tiny libraries were about a mile and a half away. Since my mom didn't drive and thus we didn't have a second car, I didn't get to either very often until I was old enough to walk the distance, unless I could persuade my dad to put off his Saturday bowling for an hour or two to take me there. I borrowed most of my books from the school libraries.
The Auburn Library was in a storefront next to our bank on Rolfe Street, near City Hall and the high school. They had newer books, but a very small childrens/young adult department. The Arlington Library was up on Cranston Street, going toward the Narragansett brewery. It was an old brick building next to an older wood frame structure, the Hamilton Building, which had once been a school. I got most of my polio boosters at the Hamilton Building, before it burned down and was replaced with an uninteresting modern building.
Arlington had two stories. Upstairs was the adults' library while the childrens' books were downstairs. Today we would not recognize it as being for kids: it was dark and quite adult; no bright colors or murals or plastic tables and chairs. The wooden tables, chairs and shelving were all of dark wood in a room with low lighting (no fluorescents here!).
Today I would give a lot for the old books that were in that downstairs room at Arlington. Possibly they had bound St. Nicholas or Wide Awake issues down there; I know they had the entire collection of Thornton W. Burgess' "Old Mother West Wind" books about forest animals, which I read because I was crazy about anything having to do with animals. I read books about people only reluctantly; I read books like Roller Skates, Little Women, etc. only as I got older. What I wanted to read back then was Walter Farley and Marguerite Henry and Jack O'Brien and Jim Kjelgaard—and Arlington, I remember complaining bitterly to my mother, had books so old that the newest of them had a girl driving a car with a running board! (I was quite scornful about this!)
However, one of the books, despite it being printed in 1931, met with my approval: it was called Flax: Police Dog and I loved it. I did not sound as if it had been written by an American author; I thought it was translated from the German until I did some research on the internet some years ago and found out it was from the Swedish instead.
So I thought it quite natural and proper that my German Shepherd be named after that hero of my youth.
Yesterday, I also found Flax: Police Dog available at a reasonable price from a bookseller in Germany, via ABEbooks.com, so I ordered it. We'll see if re-reading as an adult will be as engrossing, especially since I am now an aficionado of old books.
Heh...
::snort:: I now have so many corn husk dolls that you could call my autumn room "Valley of the Corn Dollies."
The Swift Crackle of Fall Festivals
LEAF collection continues. I missed a total of four yesterday, which was very frustrating. I am dying to do a fall cottage and fall field despite the limitations on Webkinz World, like no fall-colored trees. I think I can achieve my goal with enough wheat sheaves and potted elm trees (although the elms will not go outside) and some creativity, but I keep getting apple cider and toques. No help. The elms seem to be rare, although James managed to amass five so far. I haven't even gotten one yet; the elm I have was a gift from him.
Yesterday was quite funny because I spent a total of 90 minutes playing games with only one leaf spotted. Then about 10:50, I logged on to bowl a few games. For every game I got a leaf, for a total of three, bang-bang-bang one after the other. Amazing!
When Is a Headline Not a Headline?
WHEN it doesn't match the story!
Right now in the "What's New" section of the newspaper, there are three stories. The first talks about a new activity at the Academy.
The second headline announces "Lil' St. Bernard is Back", but talks about being the month of October and time to adopt the Pet of the Month, a frog.
So we come to the third headline, "Fabulous Fall Gifts," which instead talks about activities to do with your pet of the month!
Hellooooo! Wakey-wakey!
Watch for Falling Leaves!
THE Fall Festival started promptly at midnight on Saturday. Fifteen minutes into the hour I had my first gift, some pumpkin soup, and got another twenty minutes after that, the maple leaf sweater.
The leaves seem to be rather meager today. I was on for 90 minutes and only got some cider. Thanks to James giving me his second potted golden-leafed elm tree, however, I now have one of each gift: besides the four already mentioned, there is a funny looking apple hat, a fall toque, a fall poster, a shock of wheat, and a corn-husk cow doll. The food seems to be the most common, so I have two ciders and two soups.
To get these prizes, you must wait for a leaf, which is fairly large, to drift across your screen. It can be yellow, orange, or red (there are reports of brown ones). When you click on it, it makes a crunching sound like someone stepping in a pile of leaves and a prize is issued. The leaves do not seem to appear in the arcade, but are seen chiefly in the rooms, but occasionally at the employment office, in the curio shop, and at Quizzy's trivia area.
Excelsior!
FOUND reindeer today at the Learning Express at the Avenue at West Cobb. They still had some left after I bought two.
I don't think I want to activate mine until the Christmas season, and James' is a gift. So you won't be seeing them for awhile.
Bingoz!
NOT me, I don't play it anymore. But James had a ton of coupons from cards and I've been sending him mine every time there is a freebie. So he used them on two-ball Bingoz last night and got it with two coupons to spare.
Sigh...Just One Trophy, Mr. Scrooge? Please?
I'M terrible at the games compared to everyone else, and this shows because some people have roomfuls of trophies. One person is even making a chess game setup with his trophies.
Unfortunately they don't give trophies for mini-golf and Quizzy's word challenge.
So I'm still trying for a Go Go Googles trophy. I hit my highest score today, 18,001. Still pathetic compared to everyone else. Ah, well. Excelsior and all that.
Spook Brigade
GANZ distributed the remainder of the Hallowe'en theme today, including new wallpaper and floor from last year, and two different foods, pumpkin pops and bat cookies.
So my Hallowe'en "B & B" has undergone a facelift. I love the double windows; I have this capped just as the lightning flashes. Before the lightning flashes, you can see a tree tossing in the howling wind outside. And something lurks in that dungeon—see the red eyes and mouth?
Occasionally red eyes appear in the gaps under the floorboards as well.
What's the "Fall Festival"?
WELL, we don't know, but here are the posters advertising it:
Last winter, however, they did a "winter festival," with snowflakes flying from "the sky." If you successfully clicked on a snowflake, you could get a snowflake sweater or toque, a hot chocolate, or perhaps even a Polar Plunge poster.
We surmise there will be leaves for fall festival, but not sure what the prizes will be: maybe a fall-colored turtleneck and some type of cap? Perhaps a decorative pumpkin for a room?
It would be too much to hope that they would have fall trees and fall yards/grass for sale...sigh. I'd love to have a "Fall Forever" yard or room!
"Bee Like Barry"
BACK on September 21, I commented on this:
Another item is something a user on WI found one day while doing daily KinzCare. An extra screen was visible. Recently, WW upgraded to a full-screen format. Instead of having the games and rooms be full screen, little "advertisements" for other games on WW appeared at the side of the screen. Some of the advertisements were PSAs, telling the kids playing to brush their teeth, eat fruit, go outside and play, etc.Well, an advertisement appeared this morning, without a checkbox appearing beforehand.
On the page this person saw, there was a box you could check to get actual advertisements for real products in the spaces where the Webkinz World ads were. If you accepted advertisements, you would get an extra gift at the beginning of the month.
It was immediately noticeable, for The Bee Movie, which apparently has Jerry Seinfeld as a voice. Hm.
However, later in the day I checked out AdultKinz to see what folks were saying about the ad and someone had some surprising news: if you changed screens enough times eventually one of two white ads for The Bee Movie came up. One netted you a free pot of honey, the other a bee costume (shirt, pants, shoes and bee antenna headgear).
If Ganz wanted to test out if people would accept ads, I think they have their answer. People were crazy to have the bee costume. One adult clicked so many times she accumulated 57 costumes. Whoa.
I've been happy with one costume set and two pots of honey.
The movie doesn't open until November 2; it will be interesting to see if the ads—especially the freebie ones—stay up until that time.
Crown Me!
MY God! Finally!
I turned up that darn "Volcano Viscose" this morning and finally have a Crown of Wonder. Since Neville was "on call" this morning, he gets to model it.
It doesn't do much. You can't even put it out for display. (Hey, Ganz! How about hat racks?)
But there it is.
Corrections Needed
QUIZZY'S has always been the place to "show your smarts" on Webkinz. It's a series of age-oriented questions in different subjects that you answer in groups of fifty. There is also a daily question on the calendar, plus a question of the day.
But whoever is doing the questions hasn't done their homework, we are finding. A few weeks ago there was a science question, "What causes lightning?" The correct answer was supposedly "thunder." Huh?
But today's question takes the cake: "Where is the Grand Canyon?" The correct answer was supposed to be "Colorado." Um, guys...it's in Arizona. I know not just because I can read a map, but because I've been there. Maybe the confusion stems from the fact that the Colorado River runs through the Grand Canyon, but it's not in Colorado. Sheesh.
The Hallowe'en B&B
DUFFY watches "Monkey & Monkey on the Mausoleum television.
I thought the greenery was appropriate since they are "spider plants." Heh.
In the Pink (And White)
SOME peculiar little creatures live in Webkinz World.
The Zingoz, who are vaguely teardrop or round in shape, come in various colors. Wacky is a masochistic little fellow who doesn't mind being booted with a club in order to "go the distance" or hit the target in various games. Zacky searches for treasure. Other Zingoz toss pies with abandon.
Zangoz are lumplike creatures who like to hit Zingoz.
Then there is a little critter called a google. Googles are mostly white, although a rare pink googles exists in the game "Go Go Googles," and look like ducks, with yellow beaks and webbed feet. However, they have no wings. A google asked to wave just gives you a cross look.
The stuffed version is darn cute.
Which explains why I bought one.
Naturally, what would one name a google if one was interested in history? Correct: Barney, after "Barney Google," the big-eyed comic strip character that first appeared in 1919 and who had a song written about him in 1923. He was not the first comics character to become famous, but he was probably the first to have his own song. Barney Google owned a race horse named Spark Plug, who was called "Sparky" for short and who lent his nickname to one of the most famous of comic artists, Charles Schultz, creator of "Peanuts." You can read about Barney Google's career here.
I said when I adopted the Persian cat and named her "Hilary Booth" that I should buy a pink poodle, a most flamboyantly colored creature, and name her Maple LaMarsh, after the flamboyant organist/actress with the Brooklyn twang who kept the joint jumping on Remember WENN. So welcome also to "Mapes."
Fruity
A couple of days ago, someone noticed that the little ads at the side that said "eat fresh fruit" or "an apple a day" had "click here" tags on them. They reported that if you clicked the tag, you were sent somewhere and got free fruit.
So I was a bit frustrated this morning clicking on these links and having nothing happen. Except that when I looked in my dock this evening there were blueberries, a pear, three apples, and an orange that I didn't buy.
So I guess it works after all. LOL.
Long Down...But Back With Surprises
THE "surprise" coming in two weeks is here: Kinzville Academy. Your pet can try out three courses, and then sign up for three a day. Apparently during the winter there will be competitive games held and the courses taught at the academy will help you to compete.
If that wasn't enough to cause a flurry, most of the Hallowe'en items are up in the W Shop. I love the glass-topped pumpkin tables and the haunted organ.
Hmn. Wonder which pet should live in that room? I already have a wizarding them for Harry, my black cat.
A Wonderful Gift!
LOOK what a super user on Adultkinz sent me for my park—a beautiful fountain to complete it.
Hilary Booth admires something so cultured and aristocratic.
Growing Pains
THE first Webkinz "Pet of the Month" debuted today.
Let's say there were glitches. :-) About half the people that registered a frog this morning didn't get their "Pet of the Month" goodies.
I'm a little less enthusiastic about adopting a POTM now because it has been revealed that you don't get to pick your exclusive item; it's just assigned like a special adoption gift. I really want that snow machine for my winter park (and the crystalline pond would look cool in my fantasy forest; the star machine wouldn't be bad, either). Eh! reaction to "Donut Plant," unicycle, lurking pond, and moving picture. James wants the outer space window for his science room.
However, I did buy a pig due to the rumor of it being POTM for December. It really looks more like a Muppet pig, one of the ones from "Pigs in Space," especially the eyes.
Someone on Webkinz Insider reports finding the brown Arabian horse, which isn't officially released yet (the newest pet is the German Shepherd; the virtual pet comes with its own police car <g>) and its code won't work. The other official pet release right now is a Lil Kinz Basset Hound.