does anyone speak html?

I've spent hours pouring over the code in this blog. Whenever I change things, something else happens and I have to figure out why.

I've mostly got it down, despite the fact that I don't speak html. I'm still having some problems though- I have NO IDEA why the second half of my sidebar is tilting to one side. I mean, I put it up by myself and thought it looked straight, but when I stood back to take a look, I thought, "Is my head tilted, or is that crooked?"

For a bit, it knocked the entire side bar underneath the main page. I forgot a "<" in several lines of code...fixed it though. Then I got SOME of the offending lines to go back in line with everything else, but despite the fact that the same thing that I cut and pasted to fix those bits (after comparing them to straight bits) worked on the first few, the last links and my archive pages are still falling to the right.

Any comments or help would be greatly appreciated. If you think you could help out- contact me and we'll talk it through. I'm convinced that it has something to do with the top part of the template where it sets out the contents of the sidebar...I just don't know what!