I am making my changes in a Bazaar branch hosted on Launchpad.  It took
me quite a while to get things set up more-or-less logically but there
they are and I'm currently trying to re-apply my local changes up to
today into the various branches I have.  Each of the 11 issues I
outlined originally has its own branch, with a root branch from which
all these branches are derived to serve as a place for a) merging in
python 2.6 alpha concurrent development (merges) and to apply any
additional re changes that don't fall into any of the other categories,
of which I have so far found only 2 small ones.

Anyway, if anyone is interested in monitoring my progress, it is
available at:

https://code.launchpad.net/~timehorse/

I will still post major milestones here, but one can monitory day-to-day 
progress on Launchpad.  Also on launchpad you will find more detail on
the plans for each of the 11 modifications, for the curious.

Thanks again for all the advice!