Tuesday, October 23, 2012

I was right to worry

So, my concerns about letting our boy wander about the neighborhood? 

Dead on.

Hubby and I were out cleaning out the old car when we witnessed a near massacre--ten or so kids trying to lure the rat-children across the street off to a place where they could beat their asses.  Listening to the rat-kids, it became clear that they (and the punk behind us) had ambushed one of these kids and, at close range, knocked him around and shot him with their Airsoft guns.  This was the attempted payback.  It got ugly, and the rat-kids' mother came out and shouted these kids (some of whom were mid-to-late teens) away.  Then we were treated to an hour of listening to the rat-kids plan their revenge.  Serious stuff, talking about baseball bats and sneaking around to flank one boy while he walked to the bus stop.

I was chilled, listening, because it's exactly the sort of thing I feared when I told our boy that, no, he may not just wander around the neighborhood hoping to find someone to hang out with.  These kids will start in on him--we already know that, they've already done it.  But away from home, where there's no safe haven?  I have no idea what might happen. 

The lice kids, after months of completely blowing our boy off, have started showing up again.  Always, when turned away, they head directly over to the rat-kids' house.  No art, no attempting to be smooth.  They come over from there and return there when turned away.  One of them actually came over after dark and asked if our boy could come out to "hang" when the rat-kids were standing right on the sidewalk, waiting. 

Goodness.

Sadly, with the car situation, it's looking like moving away from here next fall isn't likely to happen.  Hopefully, the landlord will rent to us for another year.  If he doesn't?  Wow, I don't dare even think about it.

Considering a Costco or BJ's warehouse membership.  Have a free 60 day membership to BJ's, went once to take a look.  Some things markedly cheaper than Wegmans and Walmart, some not.  Costco may have better prices, we don't know--they aren't offering free trial memberships.  BJ's accepts manufacturer's coupons, whereas Costco does not.  However, Costco sells gas, and they do it for around 30 cents less a gallon than the local gas stations.  BJ's doesn't sell gas.  So we're trying to decide what to do here.  If anyone has any money-saving warehouse tips that might help us make a decision, please share!

Speaking of cheap gas, if we want to drive 44 miles to Front Royal, gas there is 40 cents cheaper a gallon.  But it would take over two gallons to get there and back.  But we have an 18 gallon tank.  Which means it would cost $6.78 in gas to get there and back.  We would save $7.20 over local prices to fill the tank.  Add the wear on the car that comes with smacking an extra 88 miles on it a week?  Not worth it.  But it sure is a pretty drive, huh?


Our boy downloaded a new game on the computer last night, which riddled our machine with malware.  Game was called "Slender," and wow.  Browser hijacked, "adware" everywhere, homepage hijacked, even ads showing up on my blog, which is a concern because I'm not supposed to have competing ads on my blog.  I don't know if those ads were showing for anyone else (I should have three ads--one top, one body, and one bottom) or if it was just for me, but I'm hoping it didn't screw up my ad deal.  There was no "uninstall program" under "add or remove," so I ran Malwarebytes (it found 8 registry key entries and four malware/adware programs), isolated and deleted, rebooted, and manually deleted the game files.  Hopefully, that'll cover it.  The ads and browser issues seem to be cleared up. 

A sad day, thus far.  Hope it gets better. 

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