I agree with your plan.
With respect to conditioning the battery, I'm not sure whether it is necessary, but, as you said, it can't hurt to give it a try. The funny thing is, to condition mine, I intentionally left my Maxx on all day (almost 11 hours) yesterday with the music player going (even when I wasn't listening), adding new apps, etc., and with the display on with full brightness...and at the end of the day it still had 25% of the battery left! Today, I've been using it heavily for about 7 hours, and it's at 62%. Pretty amazing.
By the way, thanks much for the recommendation on the Circle battery widget. I tried it, and love it - particularly the fact that it gives the 'exact' level, rather than doing it in 10% increments. Far and away the best battery widget I've tried.