1st All Grain!

Enjoying a homebrew while making a homebrew!

Pouring the grain in

Finally my brewing buddy shows up! Priorities - The hobbit w/ fam or brewing beer?

Okay, so I will briefly sum this up while I am waiting for the wort to cool down. Never again will I brew without a wort chiller. It is 1:27 and I am still waiting for the damn wort to cool down to temperature! I really thought about it, but I was at my Local Homebrew Store (LHBS) and decided against picking it up. Big F!@#$ing mistake! I wrote down a lot of shit, but let me tell you this, I think I royally messed this one up. My errors were many, I was a nervous wreck but I think I will get beer. I posted a lot on this forum: http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/1st-all-grain-weekend-378540/ to sum it up - I panicked! Temps were off/right on, I don't know! They seemed right on, then I checked it about 3 minutes later and they were off, so I adjusted, finally I just said screw it and thought I got to the right temp and sealed the cooler. When I opened it up and let the thermometer sit, it showed my best case temp, 152 - is that a good thing? I don't know. So everything went fine after that, batch sparged for the first time and did all that along with vorlaugh. It was great, I will do a starting gravity meter reading soon (once it Fing cools down) and then I'll know how I did. It looks good, does that count? More to follow with a less drunken rage/frustration.

*** Some notes so we can reproduce this if it turns out good:
1)  Opened the Mash Tun after 1 hour and it was right at 152, what it was supposed to be. My assumption is that the final resting temperature was somewhere between 154-158 and eventually lowered to 152. Many brewer's with a similar equipment setup report a 1 to 2 degree loss in temperature.
2)   I have been switching between the garage (where temps are around 58) to my laundry room (where temps are roughly 74-78 degrees). During the day when its 58 in the garage I will ferment there, however once it starts to cool down at night I move it into the laundry room where it is currently 74 degrees. I will probably crack the garage door open to let a little to lower the temp.
3)  Also, I found out through homebrewtalk.com that I didn't check my SG (starting gravity) I checked my OG (Original Gravity).
4)  My OG was 1.047, I took a couple of readings and that was the lowest. Calculated out I did 72% efficiency. I think the main contributing problem to a lower efficiency (although I'm happy with 72%) is I ended up panicking and adjusting too much during the mash. I checked the temp about 3 minutes into the mash and it was at 158, so I poured some cold water in. Went down to 148, then I added some boiling or close to boiling water to bring it back up to 152 and I just said screw it, I'm closing this lid and I'm not going to worry about it.
5)  I really want to figure out how to accurately read the temperatures in the mash. I just put a dairy thermometer that came with my original beer kit, is this good?  I will purchase a digital thermometer along with a wort chiller before my next batch.
6)  I'm not sure if I'm hopping right, I just throw the hops in, should I use a bag? I think next time I will use a bag.
7)  I'm not sure (yet) if all grain is worth the time investment. I think I can get it down to 4 or 4.5 hours which would make the whole process more enjoyable. To be quite honest, when I hit the 6 hour mark, I was pretty frustrated, I don't know if this is common or can be attributed to my nervousness during the brew.