I attached two problem notes I found out of about 35 notes. To correct what I previously posted: gnote will open all my notes but these two show up blank. Tomboy will open other notes but will crash with the above error when I open them. Also Tomboy will not allow me to create or delete any notes. Conboy handles them without an issue. The notes are simple lists, no bullets, etc.
One thing I did notice is that conboy and gnote list the last changed date of the 'Ohio' note as 01/01/1970 and 12/31/1969 respectively.
Once I manually removed the two problem notes tomboy allowed me to create and delete notes. Which is nice cause now I can try U1 syncing