In which there is a great struggle

Still trying to spiff things up. Getting that left-hand column up has been nothing but trouble. And now that I have it sorted, things are looking goofy toward the bottom of the page. Bah.

Any suggestions of how to fix all the things that are wrong would be greatly appreciated. My HTML skillz are woefully underdeveloped. Or, conversely, suggestions on how to make peace with my delightfully flawed template would also work.

Eta: The saga continues. The magic interwebs pixies that live in FrontPage took pity on me and made the comments thing show up in the right place and took care of the bottom of the page. I continue to be troubled by the spacing (both vertical and horizontal) in the sidebars, but I'm trying to make my peace with it.