And now, the issues past, Silverlife is wonderful!
I've managed to get past the random issues that seem to plague me when adopting new technologies, and I'm digging into the meat of Silverlight 2.0 (Beta 1). This is GREAT! Blend is a great tool, and they've made using resources SO MUCH BETTER! The visual studio XAML editor works VERY well. (Intellisense bonuses: clr-namespace tags are descriptive and work well. Event handler creation was so smooth I wasn't sure it was working at first)
Layout went well for the main preview screen, and I'm looking forward to digging into wiring up behavior now. Databinding's not entirely there, yet, but I've got high hopes that it'll smooth out quickly, I only spent a few minutes on it yesterday.