Thank you all for the incredibly helpful feedback!
This is a great forum. I am learning so much from reading older threads. I was going to say that I found the information here more useful than the PADI open water manual, but that's not quite true as without the PADI material I wouldn't have been able to understand what I am reading here
For now I'm going to keep diving the easier sites around Seattle, working on basic skills like breathing and buoyancy. Excellent information about tank sizes that will come into play later on, but I'm still renting gear at the moment (planning to purchase my own in stages over the next year or two) and figure I have a ways to go and much experience to gain before air limit becomes my biggest issue.
It's very helpful to be reassured that repeating the same easy dives is a sane way to proceed. My wife and I (who learned together) were the only ones from our OW course who went diving on our own immediately after certifying. Everyone else either went straight into the AOW course, or headed somewhere tropical to dive with a tour group. That first descent without an expert to guide us was seriously intimidating (even though we were just diving a more conservative version of the same thing we did in the OW class) but we both felt it was important to practice what we learned before stretching to take on anything more.
I repeat....get a drysuit, and a bigger tank.
How much experience would you recommend before learning to dive dry? From what I've read this is at least somewhat more complex, so I was worried about task overload if we attempted too much too soon.
Great insight that the difficulty of staying warm increases with experience. My wife gets cold before I do, and at the moment we are well balanced as I run low on air at the same time as she runs low on core temperature. It's helpful to understand that we will be moving on opposite directions, with experience making my air last longer but her chill sooner.
The obvious things are to be sure you are properly weighted
I think I am? But don't know enough yet to be sure.
I had some trouble getting under the surface on my most recent dive, due to nerves and holding too much air in my lungs. Turns out my choral singing instincts (when the conductor raises his baton ready to start a piece, you breathe in as deeply as possible ready to start singing...) are the exact opposite of what's needed for diving
I do appreciate this automatic safety limiter though. Not relaxed yet? It's physically impossible to descend until I fix that. I think this is a good sign that I must at least not be massively overweighted?
At my safety stop I needed some air in the BCD to be neutral with 1200 psi left, but I'm guessing would have been close to neutral with an empty BCD at 500 psi. I suppose I should stay down longer next time to find out for sure? My wife doesn't yet feel entirely comfortable maintaining the safety stop, so we were planning to spend some time just practicing hovering at 15 feet in any case.