Thanks for the suggestions. I WILL be using them. Well, it seems my free "simulator" slows things down quite a bit, or is just broken. That was why I was getting results that were unpredictable. I decided to load it into a real pic and try it and it works exactly as expected with a few glitches I'm still figuring out (Trial by fire.) :-) It's coming along.
I am using a 16f877a that came with the MikroElektronica board.
I intend to get it working and then buy a plain pic (or maybe even a smaller one,) build it in with the supporting circuitry in a box, and forget about it. Additional sensors will be easy if needed in the future and tweaks will all be in the software instead of messing around with hardware. I LOVE IT!
I can tell this is going to be my new favorite obsession...

I'm sure I'll have a few more questions as I go, so I'll keep you posted. Thanks