It's not jacking the car up that I'm worried about here - it's the getting-underneath-it part.
There's a lot of rust under the car, and I'm afraid of bashing myself against something and ending up in the ER.
This isn't in the pan area, but you get the idea.
I think at least for now I've solved the problem with the vacuum pump. It's not ideal by any stretch, but I appear to have drained most of the oil out so I can actually top it off again for the first-time startup.
EDIT: Plus, if the threads
are gacked on the drain plug, I might be better off leaving it in there to prevent a) an oil leak and b) prevent me needing to replace the pan, which would involve pulling the engine. If I was able to do that, I'd have done it a long time ago. Just don't have much space in the garage.