Bill - I cannot help but wonder if the problems you are having are in any way related to the failure of SSE to start. Three or more threads here and in Technical Support describe a similar problem which has effected many users all of a sudden. In our case, however, the game has suddenly failed to start, and remains on the Title screen indefinitely. All of this seems to much to be coincidence to me.
I too wonder how I will survive without my SSE adventures!