I don't do a lot of web design but for my last two projects I was v.close to switching back to HTML4 to make the transition up to 5 easier when it's finalised. I think my next project (for myself) will be HTML5 but I can't quite bring myself to give up the XHTML ideology yet.
I was the same way honestly, but I switched back to HTML4 Strict. It's not that hard of a switch, and you can still keep your xhtml practices and write very clean layouts with it.