I have everything ready to do this. I'll be up early on Saturday morning and hopefully be done by noon. Fingers crossed.
Update: The job took about 6 hours and there was only one hipcup. After wiping the old gasket residue off the block, I noticed some pitting going on. (photo 1) I used steel wool to clean the area as best I could and bought some high temp gasket maker to fill the small voids. (photo 2) You can see the deterioration of the upper left corner of the gasket in the third photo. Block pitting occurred in this area. But everything went back together nicely.
Some other DIYers have had this problem as well. Could it be a northern climate thing? IDK. Thanks to the OP for putting this together.