Ok, I think I figured out the problem. I had some problems with the
postgis installation which were thus causing problems for v.in.ogr.
Once I got all the files linked up correctly so pg.postgisdb could find
what it needed to create the spatial database, it did eventually work.
For some reason, pg.postgisdb didn't like the -U flag. I had to omit
it, which was fine.
It would have helped me if (somewhere) it were clearer that postgis
http://postgis.refractions.net/ needs to be installed.
Cheers!
Craig