Being a good forum citizen, I just wanted to "share the wealth" with info for others in the future.

My a/c would blow cold for literally about 4 seconds then never do that again for 20 minutes or so. I took it to a shop, they replaced some switch that I THINK (not sure) made the 2 fans in front of the radiator work, and then the a/c blew at least about 1/3 of the time, which was better than almost never.

From there, they showed me that my idler pulley was crooked. They said it could be that the belt is slipping just a tiiiiiny bit, because that's all it takes to shut the compressor off. The belt wasn't squealing from a slip or anything, and I thought it was weird, but they said to replace all that stuff that's there together; the dampner, belt tensioner, idler pulley, and the serpentine belt while there, and that MIGHT fix the intermittent a/c problem. I had the work done, and that fixed it. A/c works all the time now. VERY nice during a blazing hot summer!! .