Random quote in header

I am converting my legacy site (peterwade.com) to WordPress 2.6b, and I’m stuck trying to get a random text quote into the header.

I first thought of a widget but cannot find how to put a widget into the sidebar, and one that I’ve set up doesn’t work. I need to know the code to place in sidebar.php at the point where I want the widget to display its result. (“A few suggestions” in my current site.)

Since I could not find how to use a widget in the header, I’ve tried the procedure I found in the forum… I have a “random_quote.php” file in the current theme directory containing…

<?php
	/* Pull quote from file for header                           */
	$quote = file("inchrist.txt");
	srand((double)microtime()*1000000);
	$inquote = $quote[rand(1,count($quote))];
	/* End pull quote                                       	*/
echo $inquote;
?>

I have added this to the css style…
background: url('http://localhost/assets/wp-content/themes/2008/random_teach.php');

But its not working. Can anyone point me to a tutorial or the correct information I need.

Thanks,
Peter