I think it's great how blog-friendly the uni is. So congrats - I am sure it'll be great. And you can think of automatically reposting things from one blog to the other, to save time.

Money panic is normal. I was sure I was down to my last cent in savings over Xmas, but then I looked at my accounts, and I had more money than I thought. I think that's the biggest lesson I've learned over the PhD: never panic without facts!