John, this worked great. I wanted to add one post from one category (featured news) at the top of my homepage and then have all my regular blog posts appear under that. It worked like a charm.
FYI...just to clarify this for others, this change happens in your index.php file. Here is the code that I used to accomplish this.
<?php query_posts('category_name=featurednews&showposts=1'); ?>
<?php if (have_posts()) : ?>
<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post();
if( $post->ID == $do_not_duplicate ) continue; update_post_caches($posts); ?>
<div <?php post_class() ?> id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">
<h2>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></h2>
<div id="date"><?php the_time('F jS, Y') ?> <!-- by <?php the_author() ?> --></div>
<div class="entry">
<?php the_content('Read the rest of this entry »'); ?>
</div>
<!--
<p class="postmetadata"><?php the_tags('Tags: ', ', ', '
'); ?> Posted in <?php the_category(', ') ?> | <?php edit_post_link('Edit', '', ' | '); ?> <?php comments_popup_link('No Comments »', '1 Comment »', '% Comments »'); ?></p>
--> </div>
<?php endwhile; ?>
<?php endif; ?>
<?php query_posts('category_name=blog&showposts=5'); ?>
<?php if (have_posts()) : ?>
<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
<div <?php post_class() ?> id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">
<h2>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></h2>
<div id="date"><?php the_time('F jS, Y') ?> <!-- by <?php the_author() ?> --></div>
<div class="entry">
<?php the_content('Read the rest of this entry »'); ?>
</div>
<!--
<p class="postmetadata"><?php the_tags('Tags: ', ', ', '
'); ?> Posted in <?php the_category(', ') ?> | <?php edit_post_link('Edit', '', ' | '); ?> <?php comments_popup_link('No Comments »', '1 Comment »', '% Comments »'); ?></p>
--> </div>
<?php endwhile; ?>