New look:

I think it looks fine--the green is just (if barely) dark enough to keep me from wanting to gouge out my eyes. And I genuinely like the overall readability of the page.

any text not in black is hard to read

If you measure from the top of your blog to the top of your first post, it's almost half a screen. Remember that most people have a title bar, a menu bar, a url bar, some quick links, a google bar, and then some tabs at the top of there screen, and a start menu and status bar at the bottom. In all that makes it impossible to read your most recent post without scrolling. I'd recommend you make your title/picture area smaller or move it to the sides. I like the corduroy.

Thanks for the comments.

Dale: if you're talking about the green text, that will change soon

Mama-Lu: taken care of

Nick: I moved it up a bit, and I'll try to work on that a bit more.

Thanks all!