Thanks. the picture of the drain and filler plugs helped me out a lot. I'd never filled or drained a manual transmission, ever.
It was a lot easier than I expected, but I managed to pull and Erik and F@#& everything up- I managed to drop the FILLER plug onto the black metal... frame piece right below and a little behind the transmission.
After ten minutes, I was able to retrieve it by going at it from different angles. If I had a right thumb, I wouldn't have been able to retrieve it, but I don't, so my hand was able to fit into the wickedly small space and finally get it out.
Initially, my ratchet wasn't long enough to supply the torque I needed, so I supplicated it with THIS:
amazing how handy a random piece of PVC piping can be.
I used a coastal liquid pump to get the amsoil into the transmission. I purchased it at autozone for 4 dollars.
if it didn't work, I was going to give my air pump a shot. thankfully it didn't come to that...