Welcome to the mad scientist club. Congratulation to new member.
Flask: If you want to save few bucks you can use baby food jars, pickle jars or whatever small jars with lids around your kitchen. Today, jars are reliable. They can stand for heat from microwave and pressure cooker. I prefer pickle jars because they are cheap and there are enough space if we want continue grow seedlings. A pint or half pint jar is perfect.
I bought media, hormone, and chemical from Phytotech. You don't have to pay Hazmat fees for media and hormone but you may have to pay it for some chemical like KOH (I remember?) You also have to pay for handling about $5 (sometime they remember sometime not). You can call and talk to them. They are nice and I don't think they are too busy.
If you order somethings from Phytotech add one more small bottle of Knudson C modified media from them. You save shipping. Only 5 bucks. It's one of my favorites. You can use it to sow seeds and keep grow seedling without replating. Otherwise, you have to use 2 media: one for sowing and one for replating protocorms. It's easy to get contamination when transferring protocorms to new medium. Hope it may help. 2 cents
Cheers