To Comment on Pimsleur Etc.
Pimsleur is major memories heh. I downloaded the first couple lessons (yes cheap I know) and went over them several times. That was the first Russian I ever studied, along with the cyrillic alphabet. It doesn't help your penmenship or spelling skills, but you sure remember the stuff they teach you. I remember going into Russian and thinking, "oh THAT's how you spell 'Вы понимаете по-русски?'"
Yay for the Princeton course (so far) I can finally call someone an idiot! ^_^ but...*cough* that's hardly what matters...
~dUcK!