New to BP's and I have some questions...

[BitterCowgal]

I picked up a 'Normal' Female Ball Python at the Reptile show in Columbus, Ohio on Saturday. I've named her Elvira and am calling her Ellie for short. She is approx. 17" in length. She wouldn't stretch out all the way for me when I was trying to measure so I had to measure in two parts. She was hatched out May 2007. She was purchased from Bruckman Reptiles. Anyone heard of them?

She looks to be a bit skinny to me but I'm afraid I don't know how to gauge body condition in snakes yet as I am a complete newbie to snakes. She isn't perfectly round. I've found on some sites that they should be well rounded. I can feel her spine rather easily and she is slightly triangular in shape. Can someone tell me, or show me somehow, how to gauge body condition? I don't have a way to weigh her at all at the moment.

I was told she has been being fed a F/T Mouse Hopper once per week. Her last feeding was Friday, October 26. I went to my local pet store yesterday to get some Frozen Hoppers to keep on hand for her and found that they do not have any. They stock Pinkies, Peach Fuzzies, Fuzzies and Adult Mice but no Hoppers nor Weanlings. I measured her girth with a piece of string and found that she is approx. 3 inches around. Do you think she'd be able to step up to a small adult mouse? Also how many mice should she be getting at each feeding and how often is optimal? Different sites say different things here. I was intending on feeding one F/T mouse twice weekly for a month or two and then drop her to one F/T mouse once weekly. My thinking there was because I thought she appeared a bit skinny.

She is getting ready to shed as well. I know to try and get the humidity up to about 70%. Is that relative humidity? Am I okay to go ahead and handle her while she is preparing for a shed or should I just leave her alone until she's done? Seeing as how I just got her maybe I'd be wise to leave her alone for a week or so anyway to let her settle in? I've had her out twice since bringing her home and she's seemed relaxed both times.

Last question..
I have her housed in a 20 gallon glass aquarium with secured screen lid. I'm using Aspen as substrate. I've got a medium dog bowl for water, a small chunk of driftwood in case she gets the whim to climb, and a hide on her warm side. I haven't got a hide on her cool side as of yet as she seems to hang on on the warm side most of the time and had no interest what-so-ever in it while I had it on the cool side. I have a Exo-Terra Rainforest small UTH on the warm side. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be doing much good at all. It's the 8" x 8" one. Box says it's only 4 watts. Temperature on the substrate above it gets to only about 80F. Is that normal for this particular UTH? Should I have gotten the Desert variation or is this one defective? I don't have the funds to get another UTH right yet. It'll be about two weeks before I can. For right now I have a red spotlamp over the warm side. It hovers the temperature at substrate level between 92F and 94F. Will this do for her for now? What do you recommend for the UTH? Eventually I'd like to be just relying on the UTH for heating as I think belly temps are more important than ambient, correct?

As you can tell I'm a bit clueless despite the four days I've spent surfing around reading up as much as I can on Ball Pythons. I'm thankful for any advice or suggestions ya'll can provide.

-Heather