Time Machine Appears to Backup but Cannot Retrieve Files

Question

I'm having problems with my Time Machine setup and I hope someone can give me some tips to get it working properly.
A few weeks ago I took my iMac into the Apple Store for some repair work. They created a Time Machine backup of my hard drive using a WD Elements 2TB external USB drive before performing the work. After the work was completed, they rebuilt my hard drive with my existing data. Only bad thing is all of my data now has the creation date of November 30h. Okay, I'll survive that part.
Now that I am home I decided that I want to start using Time Machine in my daily workflow for the first time.
Here's what I know:
1). TM appears to be backing up properly. My oldest backup is November 29th, which corresponds to the first backup the Apple Store did.
2). My last backup was less than an hour ago, as it should be.
3). When TM is mounted and backing up I can see 'Backups.backupdb' mount. I can also look inside of it and view each consecutive backup, both hourly and daily. (no monthly backups have taken place yet).
4). When TM completes the back up, 'Backups.backupdb' is unmounted, again as it should be.
Here's what happens:
1). If I go into Time Machine as if to retrieve a file it defaults to the top level and not the folder I may be in. On the right side, instead of all of the previous dates, all I see is 'today' and 'now.'
2). I created a test folder, placed some files inside it, deleted a few, and tried to retrieve them with no luck. I can locate the folder in its current state but cannot go back to find the deleted files.
Here's what I've done so far:
1). Read many of the helpful posts and files from pondini:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2057525
2). Followed the instructions here:
http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/D5.html
3). as well as done a full reset as explained here:
http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/A4.html
Is there something else that I am missing? If someone could point me in the right direction to solve this issues, I'd be grateful.
Thanks

Answer 1

Thanks for clarifying my monthly backup comment. I went and downloaded the Widget as requested. Here's what I found. I pasted the results from the three most recent backups. Let me know if you need additional information.
Thanks for your help!
Chris
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Starting standard backup
Disk image /Volumes/Time Machine/admin’s iMac_001b63998cf1.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Backup of admin’s iMac
Backing up to: /Volumes/Backup of admin’s iMac/Backups.backupdb
No pre-backup thinning needed: 1.23 GB requested (including padding), 264.94 GB available
Waiting for index to be ready (906 > 0)
Copied 1972 files (48.8 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.
No pre-backup thinning needed: 1.18 GB requested (including padding), 264.94 GB available
Copied 658 files (786 KB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Starting post-backup thinning
No post-back up thinning needed: no expired backups exist
Backup completed successfully.
Ejected Time Machine disk image.
Starting standard backup
Disk image /Volumes/Time Machine/admin’s iMac_001b63998cf1.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Backup of admin’s iMac
Backing up to: /Volumes/Backup of admin’s iMac/Backups.backupdb
No pre-backup thinning needed: 1.38 GB requested (including padding), 264.96 GB available
Waiting for index to be ready (906 > 0)
Waiting for index to be ready (906 > 0)
Copied 6102 files (178.2 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.
No pre-backup thinning needed: 1.20 GB requested (including padding), 264.96 GB available
Unable to rebuild path cache for source item. Partial source path:
Copied 359 files (22.8 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Starting post-backup thinning
Deleted backup /Volumes/Backup of admin’s iMac/Backups.backupdb/Christopher Nalty’s iMac/2010-12-26-141215: 264.94 GB now available
Post-back up thinning complete: 1 expired backups removed
Backup completed successfully.
Ejected Time Machine disk image.
Starting standard backup
Disk image /Volumes/Time Machine/admin’s iMac_001b63998cf1.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Backup of admin’s iMac
Backing up to: /Volumes/Backup of admin’s iMac/Backups.backupdb
No pre-backup thinning needed: 1.22 GB requested (including padding), 264.98 GB available
Waiting for index to be ready (906 > 0)
Waiting for index to be ready (906 > 0)
Copied 2212 files (38.3 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.
No pre-backup thinning needed: 1.18 GB requested (including padding), 264.97 GB available
Copied 153 files (33 bytes) from volume Macintosh HD.
Starting post-backup thinning
Deleted backup /Volumes/Backup of admin’s iMac/Backups.backupdb/Christopher Nalty’s iMac/2010-12-26-131206: 264.97 GB now available
Post-back up thinning complete: 1 expired backups removed
Backup completed successfully.
Ejected Time Machine disk image.
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