Design_Patterns.equals("Zen?")

Hi there,
I've been on a Java training course in London for the past week. Since I've did about four months of preparation reading before I went and started my first serious Java project, I found the course a little easy......which was quite heartening in a way.
I'm working on my first Java SE (desktop Swing application) for work. Its a simple utility that uses a GUI to lock / unlock users quickly from an Oracle database. Reasonably simple, but at my current level of skill, satisfyingly challenging. I've logged about 14 hours on it so far.
Anyway....I digress a little. Basically, I keep hearing a lot about Design Patterns. I have a vague idea of what they are (standard logical descriptions of generic problems and solutions in OO programming). I'm having a few problems in designing my utility to be as tidy and OO-like as possible - things like how to represent a database connection, do I put all my event handling (ie business logic) within my GUI frame, how to best make this object communicate with that, etc......
I'm having a incredible amount of fun with Java and am hoping to be really good at it one day. Do design patterns really help with the sort of stuff I will be doing (J2SE desktop Swing apps connecting to a backend database) and do they really help you reach the "next level" in Java programming?
The de-facto text seems to be "Design patterns : elements of reusable object-oriented software", but I'm finding it hard-going (too abstract somehow).
Can anyone recommend a slightly more accessible textbook? Perhaps something with some sort of practical implementation in Java, so I can get the methodology?
Little help?

I'm having a incredible amount of fun with Javame too; i guess this book deserves a close look .
Buy it at amazon - its cheaper there

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