What helped immensely of all these first days was The Drupal Cookbook (for new drupallers). It is a great resource, indeed. The only problem is (I think) that if this is your first CMS, you will find you need to be like an intellectual Shiva, learning on the go new concepts, new ways of thinking about the site structure, a whole new vocabulary to learn and, at the same time, get your hands dirty with the nits and bolts of the actual site.
http://drupalfordummies.blogspot.com/

And you gain super cow powers. Nuff said ;)

Kudos to the docteam. If my sister says it helps, she means it - otherwise I would have heard her, you saved my head :)