Hi Piperboy,
A great story and with many lessons for us all; thanks for sharing it. I did something very similar about 30 years ago in a Cessna with little fuel and late on a winter afternoon 'cos "its only a 30 mile local flight", what can possibly go wrong?? I ended up on the emergency frequency asking for DF bearings (no GPS then!) and letting down through cloud to below MSA, based on Dead Reckoning navigation and followed by a dark landing at a grass strip with no lights!!
30 years and 10,000 hours later I still do dumb things sometimes which leave me asking "how the hell did I do that?" As you say, every day's a school day but the big thing I've tried to learn is prepare, prepare, prepare!!
Happy landings
3 Point