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Hi Mike, I have the 130EQ, and I can see why you had trouble. 282x is an awful lot of magnification for the little scope. I never got much joy beyond about 105x (~6mm) or 150x (~4.5mm) - and even at that level, the images are sometimes challenging (often dim). It is most effective as a 'rich field' kind of scope - as mentioned above, look for the bigger, brighter clusters and nebulae. For this, the 130EQ does really well. On a good night, the magellanic clouds are magnificent; and various sights in the Scorpius/Sagittarius area could be added to Jon's suggestion, as well as quite a lot of brighter objects around the sky.
The eyepieces shipped with my scope were not so great. One was plastic, too, and the image quality, even in comparison to the Bintel basic $40 Plossls, was terrible! Not sure a whole box of Celestron goodies is quite necessary - maybe two or three eyepieces giving a range of magnifications. Lowest might be a 32mm (6.5mm "exit pupil", about as big as your eye can handle), highest I'd suggest would be 4-5mm or so, mainly for planets, and a good middle 'general' eyepiece might be a 15-20mm. But a lot of that is personal preference (and how much you value the extras), and the Celestron box might do you for a future scope too, if you're that way inclined!
Clear skies!
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