I've read through everything again, and I don't see anything obvious. It definitely looks like you were having trouble originally with your z height, and that was killing your adhesion. Personally, I've never gotten PLA to stick to glass. Cold glass with blue painters tape works great for me. For ABS, the glass and hair spray works best.

The blobby prints you posted recently look to me like a couple of possible problems. If the nozzle is crossing between islands in the print, your retract might not be working right. Try reducing it to 10mm/s if you haven't already.

I don't know how your calibration went, but way too much plastic could cause that look.

If you're printing small parts without a print cooling fan, the hot end just sits above the same area for a long time, radiating heat that re-melts the print. This can cause that look. Of course, if you're using a heated bed, the print coolingfan will make the print curl. No problem with a cold bed and painters tape.

Make sure slic3r is set to print loops around the part to clear the nozzle before printing. This avoids the sparse first layer you mentioned early in the thread. You can also peel up the loops and measure them with calipers to check your bed level and z height. The thickness should match your first layer thickness exactly.

A video of it printing would be very helpful. We may notice something that you don't realize is abnormal.

One other question: where do you live? Do you have high humidity there right now? Is the printer in an air conditioned space?