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Hi Suzy,
I thought I would add my thoughts as I am a complete newbie to all this as well (by the way Im pretty sure I asked similar questions before I bought my telescope as well). I just recently bought an 8" skywatcher dob after cruising a few astronomy forums for a while. It is pretty heavy but I can still haul it around by myself if I need to.
I couldnt afford the goto setup and was a little worried I would suffer because of it as I knew about 3 constellations and how to find the moon and that was about it! Anyway I have had a great time with my telescope so far. I have been using stellerium, a star disk and a couple of books. So far I have been sticking to the easier to find things but that has kept me busy enough for the past couple of months and I am learning to find my way around the sky.
My favourite book (as a complete beginner) is A guide to the night sky. It was great because the starhopping chapter works through one section of the sky at a time. I found the other books a bit too complex for my level of knowledge at the moment. For the planets I have been using Stellerium, which I have been taking outside with me.
My only problem is hours seem to go by so fast and I end up going to bed really late!
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