1st issue: I left the padding for the center area at the default 10px. That works fine for the blog. But I created several pages and whatever I write on there has a huge amount of padding from the top. I cannot find any place where I can reduce or eliminate that.

2nd issue: When I add a picture in the center area and I try to move the text around so that it looks right, the editing goes crazy on me. I make the same correction several times, but it does not take it, it reverts to to the unedited version. Finally I had to get rid of the picture. I never had this problem in non ATA wordpress sites. Do the ATA settings affect how I edit text and pictures?

Thanks

Shama - By no means am I an expert with this theme. But try this padding-top: 10px;
I can't hurt to try it.