ok. Finally got something I can work with! The hair was taking days (literally) to render at the inches settings, so I went back to feet and turned up the density to 20,000. I may turn it up some more. Thank you for the help! I also reviewed a Rendo tutorial for rendering that recommended maxing the "Number of Threads" in the General Preferences to speed up rendering, something I had missed before. Just throwing this out there in case it can help someone else.