Good luck with the convo man. I've been through similar situations on both ends and its not easy for either side. Hopefully he has a healthy respect for you and understands the circumstances involved. No telling how he'll react but let him vent if he needs to.
Signed up and registered a domain. Nice, quick and simple. Linked it to my hosting acct so didn't use Badger DNS. They do have a nice options page that allows you to install google apps mail,docs and calender so you don't have to enter any of the cname and mx records. Pretty slick so far.