The government in the United States seeks to protect us from ourselves. We're not allowed to smoke pot or drive without our seatbelts, and almost anything you could fall off of has a guard rail or a sign instructing you not to fall.

Sadly, there is no such safety net to prevent dumbasses like me from buying a house. There is no homeowners aptitude test, nor special restraining device. All it takes is marrying a wife who has a lot of Hewlett Packard stock and you too can own a home, regardless of your ability to actually maintain said home.

So, anyway, our garage door has been acting all crazy. One of the wheels routinely pops out of the track, and about half the time when you're trying to close the door, it'll make it almost all the way down, shudder a bit, and then reverse course and come back up. This is cool behavior for a yo-yo, but annoying behavior for a door in your house, unless you like your doors to Walk The Dog.

I tried to figure out what was going wrong, but I had no clue. I did notice, however, that the track was a little warped. I figured that this was probably what was causing the wheel to pop out, and that was probably causing some sort of stress which was making the door unhappy about closing. Garage doors are sensitive that way.

So, we called a Garage Master to come over. He spent about, oh, 10 seconds, analyzing the problem and then did two things that any homeowner with a brain would do:

1) He oiled the track. WD-40 all over that bastard

2) He turned a knob on the garage door opener

I don't know if you've ever looked at a garage door opener, the actual device that hangs from the roof of a garage and opens the door, but it's mostly a black box. There aren't a jillion buttons or switches on it. As it turns out, there's basically just one knob and it controls how easily the door will refuse to close. Ours was set to the lowest setting, labeled "Wussy". The repair guy moved it to "Don't Be A Damn Wuss" setting, near the middle.

$85 later, our door operates like a dream. I is dumb. I even own WD-40, but it never occurs to me to use it to fix things. I kind of just figured it was for decorating my shelves to make me look manly. It failed.

The repairman also noticed that the wood in our garage door is fairly rotten and needs to be replaced. He generously offered to write up a quote for me. At this point he realized that I had no clue what was going on in my garage so he did his best to fill the air with bluster.

"Oh, and you see this spindle here? On the OUTSIDE of the track? Man, I don't know who did this work, but if I replace your door, I'll put that on the INSIDE of the track. It's a cleaner look. Very sweet. You are going to like that."

You know, all this time, I felt that something was wrong in my life, and I couldn't quite pinpoint it. Unsatisfying job? Life without spirituality? No, it was the placement of that goddamn spindle. I cannot freakin' WAIT for that baby to move three inches to the right. It's going be very sweet. I am going to like that.

On the positive side of things, the two guys from the advertising agency are coming back to interview me again tomorrow for another $200. I can't wait to take that cash and ask an electrician to turn on some lights on my house. It gets dark at night.