My welding tank arrived! I ordered an 80cf tank from IOC from their eBay store, at what I'd consider a pretty good price, and no strings attached; it's a brand-new, owned-by-me, argon/co2-approved tank with a 10-year hydro certification, and with a cap for safe transportation. I'm pretty happy with it; it's about three feet tall, and won't take up a ton of space. I need to check with a local Airgas branch to see if they'll do fill-while-you-wait, rather than exchanges. Otherwise, I'll have to see about finding another welding supply company to get fills from; I'm not giving away my brand new tank, sorry. ;-)
I also got managed to get a 1/4"-thick sheet of mild steel, about two feet by four feet, for the top of my welding table thanks to Rick from the chicagodsm mailing list; he pointed me at a a shop his brother works at, who just happened to have a few big slabs of steel they were willing to carve up for me in a pinch. Thanks, guys! Now I just need to mount the 80lbs of tabletop to the table assembly I grabbed at Lowes for cheap, and I'll have a very nice place to work at.
Next up, get some gas, and attend the TIG welding class at HTP tomorrow with Erica. After that, I'm on my own, and get to figure out how to make the floorpan of my car accept the shiny new aluminum fuel cell I just bought. ;-)