Brewing the Stout

Over the past weekend I bottled my English Strong Ale (which didn't turn out to be as strong as I expected), I tasted my (soon to be renamed) Simcoe Ale (which was very tasty). And, I brewed my Stout. It was a pretty active weekend for brewing, since I'll be going out of town next weekend.
The Simcoe Ale was really good. A nice, pungent grassy hop flavor. It didn't ferment down as much as I thought it would. The FG was 1.020. Which makes me a little worried that it wasn't completely done fermenting. On top of that, I know the amount of priming sugar I used was on the high side. So, I'm drinking one each day, and if the carbonation gets out of hand, I will ice them down and get them somewhere safe.
I was a little more careful with my priming sugar on the English Strong Ale. I accounted for yeast slurry, trub, etc. I figured I could live with carbonation on the low side. I fermented that beer for 2 weeks and only did a primary fermentation.
THe stout is the Northern Brewer Big Honkin Stout all grain kit. A successful brew for the most part. But, I did have a little trouble with the mash temperature. I was aiming for 153. The temperature was a few degrees high. At least I think it was. It was still early in the morning and I hadn't had my coffee yet. I added about a half quart of cold water to bring down the temperature, and the needle hadn't moved. So I added another half quart, and the temperature went down too far (150). So I'm thinking I probably misread the thermometer the first time. So, I boiled a quart of water and added that to the mash. It didn't help very much at all. I was already worried about the volume of my mash to begin with. Because, while doing the calculations for this brew, I realized my strike water alone was over 5 gallons, so I knew I wouldn't have much water to sparge with. By the way, I used 1.3 quarts of water per pound of grain, instead of 1.5 for exactly this reason (plus the two quarts I added).

Anyway, I had been struggling with volume control before, and I think my problem was just over thinking the whole process. I still have one concern, and that's the time it takes to drain the wort from my mash tun. It will flow pretty good for a while, then it will start trickling out really slowly, and I'm not sure when to cut it off. I actually let it drain into a container (while doing my boil) just to see how much wort I was losing. The last quart and a half took an hour to trickle out. So I definitely lost some volume there. But, I saved some time, and prevented my gravity from being any lower.
My OG was 1.064, by the way. The recipe called for 1.074. So, obviously I'm having problems with my efficiency. It seems to be around 60%.
I checked on the carboy this morning, and the airlock is bubbling intensely. It crossed my mind to use a blow-off tube, but I think I'll have plenty of headspace. The temperature was about 71 degrees.