Widget in hor bar?
 

Sounds like a scene from the original Star Wars...

I would like to widgetize a horizontal bar in the header so I can very easily add an advertising plugin that I'm also using in the right sidebar. It's rather nifty; it lets you make a list category made up of ad images with links, and call them from a sidebar widget. Why not be able to do that in the header, in bar1 or bar2?

Widgets areas in the header will be available in 3.3.4

OK!

I'm dreading upgrading WP and the theme, but I guess anything is possible. Right??

Do one and then the other but don't do both at once. It will make fixing problems much easier

Good advice. I'm worried about my news site because I've customized the theme code so much.

On a couple of other sites, where I had not done any changes to the core theme files, I first did a full database backup, then backed up other files via FTP, then did the WP 2.8 upgrade via the dashboard. When all seemed OK, I then upgraded to Atahualpa 3.3.3. So far, so good.