It was hot here in Michigan today, so we decided to fire up the air conditioner, partly for the cool factor, partly to get it out of our study. We got it open and spread the parts all over, then started to really look at how it would go in the window. It was at this point I realized that our windows were made of metal, and thus we wouldn't be able to attach the air conditioner to the window (without doing serious damage to the window). In addition, it wasn't clear that the window would support the weight of the air conditioner. We stopped, thought about it, and headed back to Circuit City to return the A/C unit and replace it with a free-standing unit. We stopped several places to look at the free standing units, and finally bought the one at Circuit City (because it was easy to do - drop off the old unit, pick up the new one, and we didn't even have to move the car!) Now we're waiting for the two hours to pass after transport so we can fire it up and see how much better it makes the house feel. Or see how loud it is and how much it annoys us to have it on. We'll see in a bit which way it goes!
You may remember when we bought the original A/C unit, they gave us a more expensive unit on accident. I wondered if anyone would notice that the receipt didn't match what was being returned. They did not. I bet Circuit City has one heck of a bizarre inventory. This may explain why, whenever I ask if something is available, they look in the computer, go to fetch the product reported by the computer as available, and finally, after a long period of time, come back to tell me that in fact that product is unavailable and the computer was wrong.