oh, I'll also give you a big tip, which will save you from going crazy later when you put this on line!

when you loadVariables, you are pulling a file off a hard drive somewhere. when you go on line with this, someone might be loading those variables from half way around the world. the point is they may not fully arrive in 1/12 or 1/20 of a second. so you load variables on frame 1 and check them on frame 2, they may not be there yet! i personally pulled out a lot of hair til i realized this!

the trick is:
in your text file with your variables, add one last variable, something like:
end=1

then load your variables on frame 1.
on frame 3, say:

if(!end){
gotoAndPlay(2);
}

this will continuously play frames 2 and 3 until end == 1
at which point you know all your variables are safely in place.