REALLY stupid question

Greetings, all -
 
Apologies to everyone for contributing an extremely uninteresting and ultra-novice-level question to the community.  In fact, if the following question suggests a particular help or research source that can be recommended to me, I would be very grateful to be made aware of it (I have already combed through the online document "PostgreSQL 8.3.4 Documentation" to try and find the answer myself - I think my question is too elemental.)
 
Now that I've installed version 8.3.4 on my WinXP HP laptop, how do I interface with the RDBMS?  I know how to start and stop the server, even without really knowing what I'm doing thereby.  But when I activate the SQL command window I'm faced with having to supply several parameters that I don't recall setting and haven't a clue why I'd need to set them, i.e. "server", "port", etc.  I can live without a hand-holding interface like Access provides, but I need a little middle ground here - what's the application I should be using to create, load, etc. DBs?
 
I do have some SQL experience, but it's all in a canned, administered environment such as host-based DB2 or stand-alone Access.  I have no experience as a DBA, so you can see how clueless I truly am ...
 
Thanks for your indulgence,
Rebecca Jones