Wonderfully encouraging--thank you (Kimberly).
Thanks to the rest of you as well, I'm happy to say that the only thing I did majorly wrong was to have a crummy mask, and I'm told that I might be able to score one of those nice canister masks through one of my friends--for the price of sandblasting a fire hydrant (big chunk of metal that you can't screw up, right??...) to practice on. My compressor meets the minimum CFM, and the rig works pretty well. I NEED TO BUILD A CASE (I knew there was a reason that we've had that huge peice of plexi lying around the garage forever...)
Thanks, Ty