You can always pool mine (there are now three active pools) while you wait. You don't need a client or synchronization for that.
Anyway, as difficulty increases with price, solo mining may not be a very good option soon, unless you have strong hash power.
Yes, I probably will. I don't have very high hash power, and I'm not having much luck with DMD. I'm new to solo mining and don't really understand what I see. I see tentative transactions show up, and they get stuck there. If I restart the software they disappear. Are they stale or orphaned? I also see "Number of transactions: 4", but only two transactions are showing. And that's after having at least 5 blocks accepted according to CGWatcher. So I'm confused.