Is there any way to just drag and drop in place the order I want the photos in? That's what I'm looking for...
I suspect that you are trying to do this within "events" rather than within "albums".
Events are simply containers that your photos get dumped into. They are not really set up for "arranging" your pictures. They are not particularly good for viewing your pictures either.
The best place to "view and organize" your photos are from within albums. Any picture can be dragged from an "event" and put into as many "albums" as you wish. Pictures in albums take up essentially zero space. The original always still lives in the "event". The pictures in the "albums" simply point back to the event.
Say for example... you went horseback riding on a beach in California. When you import the pictures into iPhoto... they would all go into an event... the good, the crappy, the out of focus, the duplicates, the ones with your finger over the lens. You really cannot arrange inside of these events. However... you can create separate albums for "California", "Horseback Riding", "Beaches", "Vacations"... and each picture could be in one or more of those "albums".
Within albums... you can arrange to your hearts content.
This is a very basic point of using any Digital Asset Manager (DAM). iPhoto is a pretty basic DAM... but by using albums instead of events... it is the first step to moving away from "piles of crap photos"... to collections of photos that are interesting to view... and hold your audience's attention. Less is usually more.
I hope this helps.
/Jim