Locked Out - front and back-end

Issue Summary

Looking for a way back HOME.

I am new to Drupal and have been enjoying it. Yet, I have locked myself out of the house and I'm looking for any window open. Once in I can reset my permissions.

I was getting acquainted with working with the Drupal image module. I loaded an image onto a page (as a node) and promoted it as a news item on my original HOME node. This is when I noticed that my HOME primary menu tab disappeared. Unfortunately, this was the only place where my log-in was exposed. I suddenly found myself in the editor mode able to make text changes, publishing options etc.. and that was all.

I logged out, cleared my cache and brought the site up again. There was no log-in display. I emptied cache, disabled/enabled cookies and used the "http://example.com/?q=user" url. It brought me into the site but only with editor privileges - the same as before. These accounts were not set up for one to administer site configuration. From there I attempted my administrative url and received the message that I was denied access. I tried variations of this to no avail.

I then went to Drupal.com
Checked out the Troubleshooting/FAQ resource
Came across: http://drupal.org/node/186256. which reads:

http://drupal.org/node/379022 described a similar circumstance as mine, however, my site worked fine after the initial installation.

http://drupal.org/node/329274#comment-1607768
appears to only address user1 and not super admin. log-in issues. Is that true?
I attempted to follow this advice to be sure and examined my database/phpMyAdmin and could follow the steps up to the point of step 3 "Find the row in the table with the mask field (e.g. "%admin%") and click on the delete icon beside it."

The tip description did not match what I saw. There was not a delete icon ( a drop and empty was there) It also appeared that the far left icon in the table was a ghost image unlike others in the table that when activated produced characters in the viewing field.(see attached images)

I've searched using "access denied" in the drupal.org search and came up with more than 6000 related posts. I suppose access issues are a repeating theme. I have scanned 75 pages of these entries and have selected about ten that are possibly relevant, however they are either using a different version, or managed to resolve the issue without giving the step to step.

Being that this issue is presenting a new learning curve. I am game for getting inside my database and changing code if it comes to that.

Any suggestion greatly appreciated.
I am using 6.11