Marbles Lost - Please Report Sitings to the Authorities

I must have gone completely off my rocker the night that I decided that a video project was a good idea. Although I have apparently given some readers the impression that I know what I'm doing, or have some sort of well-thought-out plan, this is not in fact the case. I didn't even OWN a VCR until I was 16! I have never regularly used video equipment of any kind. I have a digital video camera that I received as part of a grant, Adobe Premiere which I have never used now installed on my home computer and one school laptop, only a couple of days before I will no longer be able to put off shooting any longer... and no clue how this is going to work! Today's travails: The USB cable is missing from the camera. Mind you, I am not entirely certain that it ever existed, as I have only used the camera once before now. I don't remember throwing away any useful-looking cables (duh) and the camera has been in a box in a locked closet for most of the last year. So where is that darn USB cable? Anyway, I stopped at Circuit City or some such store today to see if I could buy a replacement, but they didn't have one. The man at the store informed me that what I really need if I want to send digital video to my computer is FireWire, which I can purchase for something in the neighborhood of $40 from his friend at CompUSA. Um... I don't know WHAT to make of this latest news: True? Just a techie form of flirtation? Maybe he gets kickbacks from his friend? All I want to do is transfer the last video we shot to the computer so I can practice using Premiere... I have such an optimistic view of my ability to master the basics of new kinds of software that I sometimes bite off more than I can chew. Actually, as in this case, the problems start when an innocent stroll down new-software lane leads me into the briar-patch of cables and hardware....