Category: MLV

We woke up and began tackling the fiasco with Mario’s paycheck and his bosses. Long story short: we didn’t get to deposit before the bank closed at 1, so some fees from bills we paid would be showing up on Monday. So we kind of just lounged around festering in our bad moods.

We were sitting outside with the kids and parents, watching TV (well, I was on my laptop trying to update) when Adan came over. They wanted him to go over to the office and fix the printer because they couldn’t print out the checks until it was done. I asked to go with them, to assure that the checks were given out but Mario didn’t want me to make a “scene”. Hmph. Needless to say I was pissed that they left without me.

I was in an even worse mood when I plugged in my external to start installing more of my programs and I realized it had also somehow contracted the Trojan. I hadn’t plugged that thing into the laptop in over a month, and it had the Trojan in two different music folders. One was mine, one was Angela’s. So I just deleted all the music. Well, tried to, anyway. It makes the computer think the files are open so it doesn’t let you delete them. I had to transfer all my crap to Mario’s now-empty external and when that was finally done I formatted my hard drive. It was taking forever, so I left it running while we went to Jorge and Mona’s to celebrate Anthony’s 22nd birthday party.

Elda made shrimp cocktail and yummy cake. She also had Lucky, Mona’s son, create such a beautiful video chronicling Anthony’s life from birth until he passed away :(. I tried my hardest not to start bawling, but when Eenan started crying and Aly started crying because she saw Eenan and everyone else crying, I couldn’t hold it in anymore. I was glad Elda got copies of the video for everyone since at the end Matthew kept running and coughing in Alaethia’s face for some reason so I couldn’t pay attention trying to hold him back.

Elda had blown up a whole bunch of balloons with helium and had us write a note to Anthony. We went outside into the cool breeze and let go of the balloons. When we saw the last one float over Tom Gil and into the sky we all went inside to have cake. We came home around 9pm because Mario needed to go to the Dodge Arena to remove the mics. Adan went with him. I was bored. They left around 9:15 and got back and 11:30. When they get here he stands next to me, takes a deep breath and asks, “I know the answer’s probably going to be no, but Adan wants to go to Whiskey’s and I was wondering if I could go with him.” I kind of just stared at him…and got a brilliant idea. I said, “Sure. Go ahead. But I have LOTS of things I need to do tomorrow and you need to go with me. We’re going to Target, Ross, and Walmart, to name a few. And we might meet up with Pete and Sally. And there may be other places. I’m just warning you.”

I looked at Adan who looked at Mario and said, “Doesn’t sound like a bad deal, dude.” Mario thinks about it and says okay. Now let’s see if he actually keeps his promise.

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.