Grrrrage Door Openers

On one recent Saturday, Mark and I decided to head down to Nameless Mega-box Store to pick up garage door openers for our house. I assumed when we bought the house that the original openers had died from old age, and the previous owners just removed them. We thought (naive people that we are) we could just buy new openers and install them ourselves (meaning I would stand there and Mark would do the work). After searching through acres of home improvement goods, we finally found the right section, picked out belt-driven models, and took them home. Then we discovered the truth: our house has never had garage door openers because the brilliant, brilliant builder put a beam in the way. This beam precludes any standard variety opener, so our house has probably never had one. We then went back to Nameless Mega-box to return the old openers and ask about alternatives. The man there got quite gleeful telling us about the dangers of all non-traditional openers ("and then, if the spring doesn't catch you in the eye, the door will fall on your head!"), and said that we are basically screwed. Never daunted, Mark called in a garage door specialist who came out to the house. His opnion? We are screwed. The only solution is new tracks and new doors which is a five figure solution to what should be a simple problem. This is quite a bit more than our origianl budget of not much. For the moment we continue to jump out of the car, open the front door, run through the house, open the garage door, jump back in the car, pull into the garage, jump out of the car, close the garage door... Thinking about all this makes me realize that I am a spoiled, spoiled person.