Working with pages of data (LIMIT/OFFSET keyword)

I'm generating a query on the fly to return a set of data, however I
only want to display 30 rows at a time to the user.  For this reason,
I use the LIMIT 30 OFFSET x clause on the select statement.  However,
I also want to know the total rows that match this query had there
been no limit, that way I can display to the user the total count and
the number of pages, and have Next/Prev buttons in my UI.  I can think
of the following ways to do this:

1) When the page loads, execute two totally separate queries.  One
that does the COUNT, and then another query immediately after to get
the desired page of data.  I don't like this as much because the two
queries will execute in separate transactions and it'd be nice if I
could just perform a single SQL query and get all this information at
once.  However, I will use this if there's no other way.

2) Execute two select statements in a single SQL query.  The first
table will contain a single row and column with just the count, then
the second table will contain the results for the page.  This should
work in practice, but I don't believe Npgsql supports the idea of a
single query returning multiple tables.  Or this might be a Postgres
limitation, I'm not sure.  MSSQL supports it, however.

3) Do something weird with query parameters or return values.  I've
messed around with this, but I don't think parameters, variables, or
return values are supported outside a stored function call.  Since I'm
generating my SQL statement on the fly, I'm not calling a function.  I
could write a function that takes parameters for all the values,
however I'm JOIN'ing different tables depending on what the user is
searching for.  For example, I don't join in the users table unless
they're filtering some sort of property of the user.

Anyone ran into this situation before?  What's the best approach here.  Thanks!

Mike