Hey Ockie,
Never mind the skill level, there are worse days for all of us :D
update I apologize i did not see the caption as having the same module i was recommending. This text below then is redundant

I just wanted to suggest you to u check the XML module mentioned in first reply to total noob question about xml parsing. This might be useful in the 'doing a lot of stuff' section of your code and overall make your script more readable for others
The Thumb rule everyone keeps advising me is to reuse stuff already written efficiently by others and not make low level calls when it can be avoided.
Parsing an xml document should be one of those cases.
Cheers.