my garage door broke this afternoon. and i don't mean in a nice sort of broken way. a nice sort of way where people stand around and mildly say, "oh this can be fixed". no this was more of an open mouthed blank stare of utter and complete uncomprehension and when the realization of what had happened finally dawned, it was then one very loud, very agonized "OH PISS!!!!!!!!!". you see, my garage door is something of an engineering dream. the top part of the door runs along a track and then on each side there is a metal cable that runs up to the ceiling where they are each attatched to a pulley and then go from there and attatch to a big muffler shaped metal container which is filled with very large rocks. this balances out the door so that when you are opening and/or closing it it doesn't come crashing down on you, it will actually just sit still when it is halfway up (or down if you are pessimistic about the whole operation). unfortunately for me one of the cables snapped (although luckily for me it didn't lash out and take off my head) and so now the garage door is hanging at a very drunken angle with the one end rather ground into the floor of the garage. while the rest of the door's weight is being supported by the other ONE cable. i'm rather worried that the other cable is also going to break and kill something along with it this time. i hate having to fix that door. the last time was when Cathy the crazy artist lady still lived with us and i have no idea how she did this, but one of the cables simply popped off the pulley rather than snapping entirely. so my mum and i had to lift the door and then propped it up with a humassive 4x4 and then i had to hold up the great big muffler thingy with all the rocks while my mum put the cable back onto the pulley track while making sure that it didn't come down on her fingers and take them clean off. this door of mine weighs about 400 pounds by the way.... very scary to think about having to lift it AGAIN... oh dear. anyway, when we were almost done the 4x4 fell on my ankle and took a lovely chunk of skin along with it. very fun. i am NOT looking forward to this process again. only now we have to go out and find another cable that will work. oh dear. but i suppose as long as the whole door stays somewhat vertical then it's not so bad. i really, REALLY don't want to have to lift 400 pounds worth of garage door if it's lying flat on the ground. we'd never get it back up there. oh my. at least my car wasn't IN the garage when this happened... now THAT would have been annoying.. i would have had to do something creative involving moving the cupboard in the middle and somehow maneuvering myself into my mum's half of the garage and getting out that way. at least me car is super short, so i imagine it might have been possible. still very glad that i will never have to find out. hopefully at least. this is one very vindictive garage door we are dealing with.