Thanks for the archiving suggestion. I'll do that.
I'm thinking I'll just side load everything, unless I decide I just *have* to buy a new book from B&N while I'm traveling or something. When I get home I can pull the new book to Calibre and insert it into my existing organizational scheme. I'll have to go out to B&N's store from the device, and buy something, just to try that part out.
Mostly I guess that I will leave it in airplane mode, rather than leave it to drain its battery just to chitchat with my wireless router for no reason. I must admit that the idea of disabling the wireless makes me laugh, since I also have the Sony readers and people are always trying to convince me to be upset that they lack wireless.