Nursery for New Members

help. I know Im not new but a couple things I cant work out.

1) how is it I seem to get " automatically" subscribed to threads? Ive never manually subscribed to any thread but seem to have a huge list of subscribed threads- some of which I would NEVER subscribe to.

You have got automatically subscribed to every thread you've posted in. You can change this under 'Default Thread Subscription Mode' in 'Settings and Options' in User CP.

2) at the bottom of where my subscribed threads are, there is a list of people who have left me a comment with +1...is this something to do with rep? where is the option to leave this for people?

It's the remnant of the old rep function. You now access it by clicking on 'comment' near the bottom left of each post.