Webkinz Crazy

Can we talk? Since when do I have to fight my kids for use of the computer? Since when is their excuse to get on the computer "mom, I have to feed my Webkinz!"? Since we caved and bought them one, EACH! I don't know why we were in the mall a couple weeks ago. I haven't been in the mall, you know walking around checking out the stores, in over a year. But we were there as a family and we wandered into Limited Too. There they were WEBKINZ! These little animals were on sale buy one get one free and we figured we would buy one and get one free and well we bought them each one. They get home and want to put their codes in the computer. Little did my husband and I know what we were doing but he helped them set up their account and then it started. At first I thought "oh this is cute" but now (sigh) I am just over it.

The day starts with the Wheel of Yum or the Mega Wheel of Wow (yeah, you know what I am talking about) and then breakfast and school. They return home from school and immediately one asks to get on. We have to set the kitchen oven timer for 15 minutes and they rotate all evening. Every 15 minutes the alarm goes off and they switch. We have rooms (yes, mulitple), clothes, games, furniture, and Caroline has just recently sold everything to get an "outdoor room". This poor dog has no food and his food line is down in the 50's but she's got that outdoor room now!

The other day I couldn't get one of the kids to take a bath and finally I had to enforce punishment. "No Webkinz for two days!" Yup, I did it. You would have thought I had taken out a live pet and shot it in the backyard! Let me tell you, that was a torturous two days for me having to hear all about how this virtual dog was starving to death, lonely, needing to get put in a bed, etc, etc!

Oh, you ask how can I be on the computer posting this? I am on my husband's work computer. Shhh, don't tell!

Instant Messaging

Our first computer that was hooked up to the internet or had the capability was in 1992. I had bought a computer with graduation money from College. It had a 102 mb harddrive, and that was an upgrade. It had Windows 3.0. Then I upgraded to 3.1 when it came out. I was on AOL as soon as it came out and I was one of the ones who paid BY THE HOUR! There were months that my AOL bill was quite expensive. I want to say it was $9.95 for the first 5 hours or something like that and then you had to pay for anything over that. It was dial up and the internet was fairly safe. One of the fun things on AOL was the chat rooms and I would spend a lot of time there, just chatting away. Then we had Instant Messaging. Wow... what fun when my college friends also got on AOL and we could talk online!

I loved it when AOL went to just a monthly service charge and you could be online as much as you want. Well there wasn't much out there other than what AOL had on their servers. But as time went by more and more websites were being formed and you could truly start surfing the net.

When we moved into this house, my husband was now in the IT profession (before he was a tennis pro) and he set up our computer and internet to go straight out to the net using netscape. I literally went through AOL withdraw. I tried to set up an AIM account and it didn't do much for me and eventually I found that life without AOL was fine and I found other websites to surf. But I missed instant messaging.

Life goes on and a few upgrades to the computer, no more dial up but now a cable modem and DSL. I still find myself on the computer a lot and hadn't missed anything since blogging.

However, a friend of mine mentioned that we could instant message each other through MSN. We both have Hotmail and they have recently been doing some upgrades and boom there it was in my face yesterday. So I did what it said, followed the directions, and downloaded the necessary programs and BOOM I now have instant messaging capabilities.

Wow, I didn't realize I had missed it so much. It is a good thing that I can't access it at work (tried), because I wouldn't get anything done otherwise.