March 18, 2004 - The morning was pretty standard for me. I woke up, convinced myself to continue going to work another day, showered, and got to work right around 8 AM. The drive to work is definitely a lot nicer now that I don't have to drive for 7 or 8 minutes to get to the highway. Bonus points awarded to my new apartment. We had the bi-weekly meeting in mid-morning, and it led nicely into lunch time. I used lunch to deposit some checks and return the gas pipe I bought last night at Lowe's. Whenever I go to a hardware store I get sucked in and wander he aisles until I buy something. Today was no different. I ended up with two big springs for my garage door. I was able to get out of the place without any other purchases, so my spending was significantly less than my past few trips. I ate my ham sandwich at my desk and then the rest of the work day took care of itself. Without official plans for the evening, I drove to my house and began working on the garage door. My experience with garage door repair is that it is a very long and frustrating experience. This is based on watching my dad repair the garage doors at my house growing up numerous times. The key difference between my dad and I is that I went out and bought the right replacement part for the door, rather than trying to modify the broken part. My plan was sucessful, stress-free, and consumed only about 15 minutes of my time. I felt so great about the success that I called my dad to brag! Okay, maybe I should have kept the pleasure to myself, but it felt good knowing I had done something well. I packed up my car with a bunch of stuff and drove to my apartment. While unloading, I met Heather, who lives above me. She was bringing my mail to me, which was very nice. We talked for a bit about the apartment building, music, and favorite radio stations. She was on her way out, and I was ready to install my mailboxes in the apartment. I tried drilling into the walls but they were just too hard. I ended up using the double-sided sticky tape. The tape doesn't feel like it will hold that well, but I hope it does. I met Jamie (Jaime, Jamey?), another roommate while I was doing this. He lives upstairs, across from Heather. Then, when I was done with the install, I ran into the other neighbor, who lives in number 2 across the hall from me. She wondered why I would put up the mailboxes without getting paid by the building owner. I smelled pot coming from their apartment, most likely her husband, since she was just coming home. After making some potato soup, I drove over to Rohs Street Cafe and enjoyed some great jazz with a raspberry iced Italian soda before heading home and getting to sleep.