I can't reply to the OP's reply, so I'll write it here: my advice is to give up on responsive design, particularly if it's giving you trouble. Why bother unless it's "free" (given to you by some premade design you're using)? In general you're going to have to design a page different per medium, so why make the technical implementation of that design more difficult on yourself by having responsive design as a constraint.
Sure, totally valid. I just built the site from scratch in simple HTML/CSS, so I figure this is a risk-free place to learn something new. I've been doing a lot of IA and product management for 18 months, so I'm catching up on the latest practices a bit.