Ignition coil was bad - I'm still going to check the stored codes when I have more time tonight, because i"m still not certain this is the only problem. The ignition coil that went bad wasn't factory and I see that the previous owner already replaced the distributor and the key ignition at some point leading me to believe this has been a problem in the past. What would constantly burn out ignition coils? seems to me there's probably a short happening somewhere, which isn't surprising because I've found and replaced two bad wires already - but what would be enough to burn out the ignition system?

The plastic shielding around the ignition at the steering wheel had a bad gap in it that I closed up right before this problem occurred - would there be anything in there that they might have purposefully been giving more breathing room for some reason? Maybe I crimped some wire that they meant to replace and hadn't gotten around to it? Also, i don't know if it's coincidence that I happened to do it right when the engine was getting warm enough to run okay, but when I was experiencing the problem yesterday I thought to flip my cabin fan on high and things smoothed out quickly afterward - the engine is not overheating though (at least the thermostat doesn't tell me that it's overheating and I ran it for 30 minutes without anything steaming or smoking).

i'll keep diving - will update with any stored codes I can pull later on