Nice new layout, very much the beginning of a "web 2.0" design (yes, 2.0 design does exist - its not just about the inner workings..). Make sure that you are consistant - your "about me" section font needs to be tweeked, and match this design. Same with some of the other fonts (you are mixing serif and sans serif fonts - hard on the eyes). make sure they all match to give your blog a consistant look, and more professionalism.

I would also brighten the main text font a little - its a bit subdued, and blends a bit too much into the background, and black text on things like the calandar are essentially unreadable against the brown background. The bright blue that is used with that font size blurs the font too much - making letters smear into each other, straining the eye - is this a "bold"? if so, unbold this, or make the font bigger. The text is really what people will be reading - you need to make it easy for them to do so. useability is king for text based anything (look at the New york times on line - the layout is black/white but its extremely easy to read, there is a minimal amount of things drawing your eyes away from the article - a very friendly layout for users) The text font size is smaller than the links - that seems backwards especially if the text is the predominant focus.

Also make sure there is consistancy in your hover, on/off states across all links - for example you have related links in blue(bold?) and you have "disclaimer and comments in white. these really should be the same color to train the user what is clickable and what is not, and that white is much easier to read. Its a general best practice to do this. (i haven't checked all of them - I'm just making a suggestion)

I would change the color of your links, that blue is a little to bright in my opinion, it actually hurts my eyes a little. Id either use the orange from your title or if you really want blue try #3799FF, it tests well against the brown/orange combination you use.

Compare this to this

Or maybe not, as those links seemed to work in firefox but not IE. weird