Friday, July 24, 2009

i guess it has to be red!

so today . . . i decided i want the red bathtub.

it costs two and a half times as much as the white bathtub, and works in exactly the same way, but i want the red one.

it isn't for me. it is for penelope. penelope is my new virtual pet. she is way better than my previous virtual pets, in that she actually does stuff and i can interact with her. she lives in a cute house next to our other virtual friends and within walking distance of several virtual stores. she eats, sleeps, runs, dances, watches tv, runs races (although we are terrible at that and i don't do it very often, because i can't stand the look on her little face when i crash her into a hurdle and she falls . . . you know, i'm not very athletic!) and as of today, she can even go fishing! here she is sitting in her yard.i finally got a new room in the virtual house that my virtual pet lives in on facebook. i've been working for several days for that room--visiting people, playing games with my pet, 'buying' stuff--all to earn points so i would have enough to level up and get another room.

i leveled up, all right. and got a 'better' ball for my trouble instead of another room. ok, work, work, work again. this time i got a 'better' frisbee. woohoo~ work, work, work again, because surely this time i will get a room. surely they will not just give me a 'better' version of something i already have (which, btw, i can't find anything better about--it just looks different!) and guess what i got? a 'better jump rope!' so i stopped working, because it just seemed pointless.

so i went back to playing the game just for fun. i had all the trophies i was going to get for a while. my pet had clothes to wear and chairs to sit on and a bed for sleeping. she even started growing vegetables (which has it's own set of frustrations.) and then i leveled up. and got a room! this time when i said WOOHOO, i meant it!

i already had a sitting room/bedroom, a trophy room, a sun room with plants, and a room that i just liked the color of, so a decision had to be made about this new room. i was vacillating between bathroom and kitchen/dining room. most of the kitchen items were kind of expensive (remember, we are talking about virtual money here, but still . . . ) and did my pet really need a bathroom?

but then one day i was virtually visiting another friend who had a bathroom, and the most amazing thing happened--her pet vaulted over the side of the bathtub (here's penelope doing it,) and took a shower! the water came on and soap bubbles appeared, the pet smiled and giggled, and the cleanliness gauge shot to the top. it was so cute! so that made my decision for me--i needed a bathroom!

i was feeling pretty good, because i had this great stone floor that i hadn't used in any of the other rooms that would be just perfect for a bathroom. so i went 'shopping' for fixtures and found that the white bathtub was 1000 coins, and the red bathtub was 2500 coins. as i said, they are exactly the same, except for the color. i am guessing they operate in the same way, although i don't have any personal experience with the red one.

at this point, i had about 800 coins--not enough for either bathtub. so i started looking at what i had that i could sell and got up to about 1600 coins. and that is when my trouble began. because that was enough for the white tub, but i didn't buy it. i played around a bit more, gave it some more thought, changed the color of the walls, tried to talk myself into the white tub, and finally realized that i wanted the red bathtub--and if i settled for the white one just because it's what i could get now, every time i looked at it i would be thinking about the red one.

patience is not one of my virtues.

it takes a long time to earn 1000 coins in this game, and that is how many more i needed for the tub of my dreams. but i did not want to have to wait, so i started looking at options . . .

the easiest thing to do would be to buy some coins. you can do this. in fact, i spent a whole blog recently renouncing the spending of real money to buy something that doesn't really exist. and then i talked to diandra . . .

she said, "you know, it costs at least $10 to go see a movie, and what do you get for that? you sit in a big dark room and are entertained for a couple of hours. and then you go home, and you have nothing to show for the money you spent. BUT if you spend that same $10 for coins for the game, think how long you would enjoy spending those coins and playing with the stuff you got . . . so maybe it isn't such a bad idea after all."

hmmmm.

but no, even though, following her logic, i could now probably justify doing that, it still felt a little bit like cheating to me. for this tub, i needed to earn the coins. what i wish is that i could spend the "money" i have made playing farm town--i have 1.4 million coins on that game and have pretty much run out of stuff to spend it on . . .

ok--so i bought a couple of mystery boxes, thinking i could resell the items and make some money. but that didn't work out too well either. so i went fishing--i caught one fish, and a broken pot, a piece of seaweed, and an old boot. let's just say that i lost money on that one too.

my last hope is my vegetable garden. if i let my vegetables grow to the large size (which takes a lot of patience, which you may remember is not my strong suit) and sell them, i might have enough to get the bright and shiny red bathtub. so that is what i decide to do. but it is taking those crazy vegetables a LONG time to grow. i check them almost every hour and there is no change. i have been watching them for a couple of days now, and they haven't grown at all! my patience is about to run out.

let's see, where did i leave my debit card . . .

1 comment:

mom said...

You could buy the whilte tub now, and enjoy it, and later when you have enough coins for the red tub you could get it and then gift the white tub to me. Sounds like a plan to me. Problem solved!!!!!