I finally bit the bullet and tried a dist upgrade with Update Manager. things went well until the new software was being installed and I got an error saying there were too many errors and UpdateManager would run ubuntu dpkg --configure -a to correct the problem but that my system may be unusable. It ran and installed a bunch of packages and then quit. I have a hybrid system running now and I have not restarted (UpdateManager never got that far).
I logged out and in and tried running synaptic and again got the error
"E: dpkg was interrupted, you must manually run 'dpkg --configure -a' to correct the problem.
E: _cache->open() failed, please report."

I ran the command and a bunch more packages installed then error
"dpkg: too many errors, stopping
dpkg: ../../src/packages.c:252: process_queue: Assertion `!queuelen' failed.
Aborted"
I ran dpkgagain, more installed packages then the error. I did this 6 or 7 timesand now no packages install as all of them have dependency problems, which was the case beforebut some other packages still installed.So these are orphans of some kind.
Example:
"dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of foomatic-gui:
foomatic-gui depends on python-foomatic (>= 0.7.7ubuntu1); however:
Package python-foomatic is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing foomatic-gui (--configure):
dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of python-pgsql:
python-pgsql depends on python-central (>= 0.5.8); however:
Package python-central is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing python-pgsql (--configure):
dependency problems - leaving unconfigured"

I have searched the lists and forums and googled but the only examples I get are foreign languages that don't translate too well and aren't that relevant anyway.
Any ideas? Thanks so much. I am marginally encouraged so far but I'm not restarting my box yet unless this is unresolvable.