Haha, well I could have used a Stellaris M3 class chip which are in good availability, but to be 100% honest the lack of a Stellaris prototype board (still on order, exp. ship December) led me to pick up the NXP chips since I could buy an LPCXpresso 1768 board which will be delivered on Monday. As much as I crow about vendor independence, while I'm starting out I'd prefer to keep both my prototype board AND my project board on the same chip.
So in this case, yeah I think TI sort of lost my "business" by delaying the Stellaris LP so long. But it's not a big deal. I'll go back to investigating Stellaris chips once I have a prototype board in my hands.