One Step Up, Two Steps Back

Tonight I played in Step Four, using my ticket worth $215, and I came in a lovely 9th place. Out of 9. Sigh. In both of my previous tourneys I had doubled up early when I had big pairs and other players had smaller pairs that they couldn't fold. This time around, I found QQ in the Small blind and decided to just flat call a button raise to 80 at the 10/20 level. Normally, I repop here, with no intention of folding, but this time around I wanted to slow-play my Queens, and trap the button for some more chips. The big blind also called, and we saw a J-8-5 flop with two spades. I checked, as did the big blind, and then the button bet 175 into the 240 pot. I flat-called, and then the big blind check-raised and made it 500+ to go. the Button obv folded, and it was decision time for me. Unfortunately I didn't think about it for long, pushed, and got called by his flopped trips with 88. That left me with 80 chips, which i managed to triple to 240 on the very next hand (AQ on the button), but within a few more hands I was out.
My mistake in the QQ hand was not taking enough time to consider what the big blind could be repopping with. Even if he was only raising with a King-hi or Ace-hi flush draw I'm about 50/50 to win. If he has a flush draw with the 8 of spades I'm barely ahead (I had the Q of spades so that was not an out), and that's also the case versus the 10-9 of spades or 7-6 of spades. Plus I only had 255 chips invested in the pot, so if I had folded I would still have 1250 or so. The other thing I needed to consider was the flop itself. In the previous two tourneys, all three times I got it all-in versus a medium pair on a small-card flop. This time, the flop's highest card was one rank below my pair, and the big blind's big raise should have suggested to me that he was neither fazed by the Jack nor by my flat-calls pre- and post-flop. So really, the only hand I had soundly beaten was Ace-Jack. It's a difficult fold, but it's a fold I could have and more to the point SHOULD have made considering the stakes.
After that debacle I decided to start again at the beginning and played a 500 FPP Step One tourney. After a bluff gone bad (hard to bluff the guy with the nuts, good thing for me i checked the river), I was down to 800 chips early. But after that, I caught fire and went on to crush the table, finishing first and winning a Step Two seat. I then played Step Two, got lucky early on when I stacked KK with my QQ on a Q-hi flop (eerily reminiscent of earlier, but in my favor this time around), and maintained one of the top two stacks all the way into the money. I donked off a bunch of chips with 4 players left, but then got them donked right back (Ace-2 is NEVER ahead of my all-in). Shortly after that, though, the prettiest hand in poker did me wrong, as with three players left, I called a button push with Ace-King of Spades and lost to his Ace-8 off when an 8 flopped. (God Damn Eights). That hand crippled me, and I finished in 3rd a few hands later, giving me yet another Step Two ticket. So far, I've invested $21 and 1000 FPP's and I have a Step Two seat. Back to the grind...