We finally did it; against all good wisdom we bought an air conditioning unit that is now sitting in the window of our living room. It was 100+ degrees today and I jested with Holly about getting an AC unit. She did some research as I played “The Bard's Tale” (which I recommend) and she made up her mind that she wanted one, and had one in mind to get too. I still don't feel like we made the right decision, but we took some time and calculated our bills and expected income; I forgot to add in some bills.

We were on our way to Lowe's to buy the unit when it dawned on me I forgot to deduct the cash we usually take out each month. Lo and behold that ate up the excess I thought we would have and suddenly it all seemed like a bad idea, but by now we were in the parking lot and I had just turned off the car. Needless to say we were both in a not-so-good mood.

We looked around in Lowe's and talked to a guy. It turned out we needed a mounting bracket (sold separately) and plexiglass (although he recommended plywood). We may not have done it if Holly had not spotted a damaged unit and asked if we could get a discount; we got $49 off! Not only that but we saved $31 on the plexiglass as they happened to have a remnant big enough to meet our dimensions. So in the end we spent around $100, but still . . . that's $100 we probably don't have.

The installation was (is? Do we have more to do?) a pain in the butt. It took us 2 hours to get it done -- 2 hours of constant pollen exposure -- and even then I'm not sure I like the job we did. I'm not convinced the window is sealed as good as we can make it, nor do I like the aesthetics of how we did it. I'm not sure the mounting bracket will do the job . . . it seems to be a little off balance, and for that I could just move it, but then we had to add a pice of wood to our siding, so we might as well build our own shelf and save $20 on the bracket (assuming we can return it).

It does work though, and that's something. This is not what I expected to be doing today (or this summer actually) but it's done. I'm suffering from buyer's remorse, and since the AC unit is in the living room, I'm hot in my bedroom. It's an imperfect solution, and I'm a perfectionist . . . it bugs me.

[composed and posted with ecto]