I'm starting work on a drop down menu that uses the "son of a suckerfish," http://www.htmldog.com/articles/suckerfish/dropdowns/

I've got the CSS/HTML in perfect working order, my problem is that making the standard code (with expand on all menu items turned on) that drupal spits out from theme_menu_tree() doesn't work correctly, and adapting my CSS to work with the outputted code is impossible. What I need to do is customize the code like this, but I'm not sure how to do it:

<div id="menucontainer">
     <ul id=nav"><!--This is master ul tag for the entire list-->
          <li><a class="main_menu_link" href="/home">Home</a> <!-- This is a main menu link, it is seen always -->
               <ul>
                    <li><a href="/home/">Home</a></li> <!-- second level, this is in the drop down menu -->
                    <li><a href="/home2/">Home2</a></li> <!-- second level, this is in the drop down menu -->
               </ul>
          </li>

          <li><a class="main_menu_link" href="/gallery">Gallery</a> <!-- This is a main menu link, it is seen always -->
               <ul>
                    <li><a href="/gallery/">Gallery</a></li> <!-- second level, this is in the drop down menu -->
                    <li><a href="/gallery2/">Gallery2</a></li> <!-- second level, this is in the drop down menu -->
               </ul>
          </li>
     <ul>
</div>

Does this make sense? If so, how do I go about making this work? I know a little PHP, but not much.

Thanks for the help.