'I'd like to see how well I'm getting this, this is how the IOTA tangle works (to my understanding):
I want to send some IOTA somewhere (add a transaction to the tangle)
I have a node, or I pass my transaction to a node
the node has some "knowledge" of the existing tangle
its able to access it some how, maybe it has information about specific transactions already in the tangle such that is can access them
this node randomly selects a transaction in the tangle its is aware of and starts stepping back along veifications, like it walks in the direct that correxpods to forward in time
it walks from older transactions to newer ones
each transaction it passes it counts
when it gets to the end (a transaction that is unverified) it checks to see if the count is greater than some threshold
this is the "random walker" algorithm.

if the random walker finds a count larger than the threshold when its reached the unverified transaction on the end, it considers that transaction attached to a valid tangle and in turn considers that transaction to be a valid site to attach the new transaction I'm wanting to send.
The random walker is performed again, looking for a second valid site to attach two.
Assuming two valid sites are found, the node then begins performing proof of work in order to add its new transaction to the existing tangle.
PoW is performed by passing the hash of the first valid site the random walker found, the hash of the second, the transaction data corresponding to my new tranaction and a nonce to the curl hashing function
ie curl(tx1, tx2, data, nonce)
if the output of the curl hashing function is of a specific form, the new transaction is signed.
The node can then publish this PoW to the surrounding nodes in the tangle.
These nodes now accept the fact that a new transaction has been added to the tangle at the sites tx1 and tx2
In turn these nodes now consider this new transaction a potential site to attach additional transactions onto (edited)

That's "the story of the tangle" as I'm conceptualizing it presently

Am I close?'

Paul's response:
'tx data is first in hashing, but yes'

'data, tx1, tx2, nonce then?'

'yup
though now we've split nonce up into tag, attachment timestamp, time low bound, time high bound, nonce'