alright, I did some work this weekend on the car. i replaced all the old vacuum hoses and connectors, took out all the spark plugs and regapped them to 0.034'' (some were way out of spec at 0.040''), replaced all the spark plug wires with brand new ones, replaced the distributor rotor with a known good old one because the current one looked bad.

the car seems to run better and I thought i fixed the problem but the damn thing stalled on me again! this time while I was in drive and moving, not idling! it was embarassing to be stuck in the middle of the road trying to get the car to start.

the issue feels like an electrical one, but I'm not positive. maybe like Mike Murrell mentioned, the ignition coil? is there a way to test to see if mine is going bad?