I can't thank you enough for the time and effort you put into this. I AM confused. Only because I am using the 'bloggish' theme... not expressive. So would expressive code work in 'bloggish'? I had the same issue with expressive on my live journal account http://rakshi.livejournal.com and found some code that changed that nasty line to be the way I wanted it.
on the OFF chance it would work, I put it into my theme layer and compiled it. compiled with no errors.. but it didn't do a thing. *sigh*
I may have to struggle with this after I get back in a week or so. But I am VERY grateful to you for your help.