After spending most of Saturday under the house cleaning out our ducts and replacing the filter in our A/C unit, the compressor crapped out on Sunday.  After a long hot day without A/C, we had a long hot night without A/C.  Monday, with the forecast for temps in the low hundreds, we hopefully turned the system on again.  There was a *bang* and a flickering of the lights.  Taryn ran outside and found smoke coming out of the unit.  Our air-conditioner is dead.  Taryn is melting, I’m turning into Mr. Crankypants, and the dogs just can’t muster the will to move from the downstairs tile floor.   We’ve been told by the ARS guy that the thing is kaput, and we need to replace it… to the tune of eight thousand bucks.  I’m looking into all the replacement options out there (since we need to replace our 20+ year old furnace too), and the various ways of paying for this kind of thing (our home warranty, power company programs, gas company programs, etc).  If anyone out there has any experience in this area, I’d really appreciate getting a bit of advice.  Thanks!