Drupal is meant to be a dynamic website platform (that runs quite well out of the box) yet customizable.
Despite the good advice to create a "sub theme" by copying and pasting the current files into a new folder i went ahead and hacked at the core php and css...
While Garland itself (I'm using the "configurable sub theme Minelli" which must be modified through Garland) is very hard to work with (I will probably end up using Zen to get my final customized effect)...
FTP into your website hosting and ... /drupal-root/themes/garland
Modifying page.tpl.php with my trusty notepad2...