the 240 to -240 worked like a charm… THANKS!
oh… and i just replaced sidebar.php with the original sidebar.php and i did edit the layout in the CSS a bit.. so i just replaced my code with the original code from twenty ten
i double checked… the search widget is placed into the primary widget sidebar… and the rss widget is placed in the secondary… and thats not popping up at all…
the biggest change i made can be seen here
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/417927?replies=3
where i added some code to adjust for misaligned displays… could that have done it?
thanks!!! it did the trick