Another one bites the dust

It would appear that my 360 has crapped out again. This is my third one. Over the course of 30 minutes it:

• Locked up on Rockband
• Locked up in Assassin's Creed
• Locked up on reboot with the 360 logo and it made a single beep
• Locked up while loading AC
• Gave me an unreadable disc error on AC
• Locked up in the menu of AC
• Locked up on reboot with a single beep
• Locked up loading NFS: Most Wanted
• Locked up on reboot with a single beep
•  

I'm debating what to do. Definitely, I'll send it in for repair -- but do I buy and Arcade 360 as a replacement and then once the refurb comes back, put that in the basement? Do I get an Elite for the bigger hard drive? With the amount of action my family has been putting into Rock Band, I can't really see myself going without a 360 for a month while Microsoft hooks me up with a refurb.