Category: Bitching

Thurs., Feb. 5th – I took a break from nesting and literally spent the whole damn day trying to get rid of that gotdamn virus. I wanted to have a nervous breakdown every half hour. I found out the darn thing is a Trojan that sticks itself to media files, which is really annoying. Once you open it in Windows Media player it tries to access bad sites on the web, or something like that. I followed all the steps and even the darn excuse for a “remover” Norton created didn’t work. Instead of freaking out though, I took my time checking and scanning all my folders and getting all my pics and anything non-media onto my 8gig pin drive (thank God for Noey and Andy and their brilliant Christmas present!) and two cds. I had to restore back to the original settings and wipe my hard drive clean *sigh*.

Fri., Feb. 6th – I spent the morning getting some of my programs back onto the laptop. I was feeling apprehensive because all I planned to do since I found out on Thursday that we had the virus was to get caught up on my blog and Flickr. I kept thinking how Emily could be here any minute and I was still super behind on everything! But first the virus happened, and then even after I wiped my hard drive clean I now had to reinstall everything!

Stupid Norton wouldn’t let me activate it because I’d supposedly used it the number of times we’re allowed. I got in one of the chat rooms at the Norton site and chatted with a tech about my problem. I told him this was the exact same computer I’d used it on before and still had 225 days left. It took a while, and he couldn’t access my laptop remotely, but he got everything working. Sanjil, you’re my hero!

We were supposed to have a movie night but then we found out that Mario’s external hard drive (the one where Jorge had transferred a bunch of movies to) also had that darn Trojan in it. I told him all he had to do was back up the non-infected, non-media stuff but we ended up snarling at each other and Mr. No Patience just wiped his whole hard drive clean! Without even checking the picture folders and stuff like that! What if he’d backed up pictures from his SD card that I didn’t have?!

Then I got into an even worse mood when he tells me that he’s going to drink with Adan. I figured I’d just spent time updating then. I got online to check our expenses and find out Mario’s friggin’ paycheck bounced…that wasn’t deposited till 3 days after he gets paid! I couldn’t fucking believe it. We’ve never been negative that bad in our LIVES.

So I stewed in that bad pot of news for a while and then told myself to forget it, I don’t need to stress myself out. I plug my 8gig pin drive into the computer and when I click on the Word file containing my snippets of entries, it tells me it can’t find the file. OMFG…I wanted to kill someone. I took a deep breath, prayed, clicked on it again and there it was. Weird. But at least that worked out for me that evening.

We were up so late the night before that Mario didn’t go in to work. And neither did Jorge LOL. He’d already hinted to me when we were over at their house last night that he wouldn’t be going in, but I didn’t tell Mario till the morning, after he’d already called in. Jorge was kind of upset, but there really wasn’t any work.

We had lunch and went to Home Depot to pick up some pipes and other material so Mario could finally—after 6 years—install the exhaust in the kitchen. The funniest thing was we ran into Jorge and Jorgie. Mario was ahead of me and I was pushing Alaethia in the cart. I see Jorge spot Mario and he starts quickly chasing him with his basket. I started laughing loudly so Mario turned around and saw Jorge. I asked him why Jorgie was with him and he said they were all taking a family day, aww.

We left Home Depot right on time to pick up the boys from school. Mario started working on the exhaust as soon as we got here. I finally have a working exhaust!

After dinner I turned on my computer to look for something and for some reason I scanned my computer. I left the scanner running before we went to Jorge and Maggie’s again.

We got home and I was up at 2am trying to remove the stupid Trojan (Trojan.Brisv.A!inf to be exact) from my laptop. Mario and Alaethia were already asleep. Boo. And what pisses me off is that I didn’t even get this on my own. It happened either when Sammy asked me to download and put songs on his MP3 player, or when Mario had borrowed my computer to download some stupid Scottish song. Grr. This is the last straw; no more doing favors for anyone on any of my computers, like uploading music to everyone’s iPods or MP3 players. Our desktop is in the boys’ room and all the kids go over there to borrow it. Well, not anymore. I’m setting a password up on it and no one–not even my own children—will use it. All I need is for them to become as screwed up as Mario’s laptop. But that’s a whole other story.

I woke up that morning after the phone rang several times. I finally got annoyed and got up to answer it. It was some guy from Bert Ogden Nissan calling, once again, to convince us to go in to the dealership. I told the guy I was speaking to how we had very specific wants and needs, which included trading in the Equinox and having our new car payment cut in half—and I knew this was impossible. He asked how much we owed and I told him, and he said, “Oh yes ma’am, we’ll definitely be able to do that.” So I went to the bedroom to tell Mario, who’d been listening and was already awake. We got ready and went to dealership after I called Mom to watch the kiddos.

I can always tell beforehand how something’s going to go for me, and as soon as we drove onto that parking lot I knew it wasn’t going to work out.

We spoke to someone and told him we didn’t want to string him along and told him exactly what we wanted: trade-in, payment cut in half, and we never give a down payment. We’ve only given a down payment for 3 of the 4 cars we’ve owned and bought at dealerships. He promised he’d be able to help us, so that gave me a little spark of hope, but I guess that’s what they’re trained for, right?

He showed us a Sentra, which was really nice and drove incredibly, but I kept thinking about a van. We’re going to have 4 kids…we need something bigger, not smaller. But Mario said we can always trade it in later when we actually need all the space, so I agreed. Long story short: they were totally trying to jip us. Even after giving them our requirements they still came and told us we’d need at least a $4,000 down payment to have a $400 a month payment and they were only giving us $4,000 for our truck. That was bull, because we’d gotten it appraised for much higher. I was about to just get up and leave and the guy said he’d run the numbers again. Sure, just keep lowering my damn points! But, whatever. I read Twilight and Mario read his book and we waited.

A manager comes to us a while later and sits down, makes small talk about reading. I close my book and stare at him and he begins to talk. This one tells us we’d need a $4,800 payment to get a payment of $545 a month and showed us two other tiers of down payments which would somewhat lower the monthly payment. Um, no. Every single one was still more than we already paid and this was for a car. I told him, “Look. We came here because the first guy I spoke to said he’d help us. I gave him the facts. I wouldn’t be here right now if he hadn’t said that. This is a waste of our time, yours and ours.” He didn’t even try to convince us. He just stood up and shook our hands and we left. Grr. Waste of a Saturday morning!

Since we didn’t have anything to eat in the morning we went to eat at Taco Bell. I hadn’t been there in a while and was surprised Mario brought up going, since he’s not a big fan. When we were eating I remembered that the darn dealership guy didn’t give me my driver’s license back. Grr. We went back to get it then went to Freddy’s (Mario’s cousin) dealership to check how much the car was worth. He gave us the facts quickly and straight up. And he told us the truck was worth at least $8,000, not $4,000.

We went to the mall after that to the Mimi Maternity store. I was on a hunt for an inexpensive, but nice dress for my baby shower the next day. I didn’t want to spent more than $25 since it was a dress I’d probably only be wearing once. JC Penny didn’t have anything and the Mimi Maternity store had one dress I really, really liked, but it was $40. I was moping around, complaining when Mario reminded me about “the store downtown we went to last time”. I put the dress back on the rack and strangled him with a hug. He does pay attention sometimes! He said, “You see, I’m not completely useless.”

All the way over there, we had some interesting conversations about some people we know. Dirty people LOL.

We had an easy time finding a parking space, amazingly, but had no luck finding the store. Mario was remembering Melrose, which is where I got my dress for Mrs. V.’s daughter’s quinceñera, but they didn’t have anything but pants. We reached the end of the strip and crossed the street and went back the other way. The store I was thinking about was one I could have sworn was on a corner, but we went to every corner store and nothing. I was about to give up when I remembered the entryway to the store I was talking about and lo and behold, we found it! They didn’t have any dresses whatsoever, but I did find a nice blouse. I figured I’d pair it with jeans and my brown sandals. I was glad just to have found something.

I helped Mary and Elda with the distinctivos (or, favors) for the baby shower. After a few hot glue burns and making a mess of some, I finished with my part and came back home to start working on the grapefruit pies I was making for the baby shower the next day.

I don’t remember where Mario went, but he said he’d help me and then wasn’t around so I spent 2 hours peeling the darn grapefruits on my own. It felt like an eternity, but it was so nice to be done with it. Now I just had to wait till the next day to eat it!