apt-get interrupted, file locked

[Peter Christensen <pchris@snip.net>]

I think I'm making progress!  I tried apt-get (as suggested by Dman and
Karsten).  I ran :
  
  apt-get update
  apt-get dist-upgrade

After about two hours I lost my internet connection (not uncommon for
me) and when I tried to get things going again I got the following
messages:

  Could not open lockfile /var/cache/apt/lock, open (13 permission
denied)
  Couldn't lock the cache dir, /var/cache/apt, another process is using
it

Is this fixable?  What should I do if I lose the connection next time?

Thanks,
Peter Christensen
(note new email address:  pchris@snip.net