New blog look again, and I am sure it won't be the last!

I just had to change the look of my blog again, but decided against the cartoon kitties and blinking naff what-not. I doubt I will stay with this set up either, but the green of the old blog layout was beginning to bother me and it was clashing with what ever colors I put in via my photos. Is all it too black dark gray now though?

I would try one of the new 'blogger in draft' templates, but I have been looking at the blogger forums and it appears there are a LOT of kinks to work out before I go that route. This sudden auto-pagination thing  is making people crazy a month on, as well. I am new to blogging so I think I will wait till everyone else has figured out how to fix the problems before I end up adding to the list of "Help!"  In my first post I did warn that it was a work in progress and subject to being different at no notice.  Everyone read that, right?

Nothing is permanent, except for the post urls, I have discovered.
  
**Black has been disapproved of, but what about this gray?  Leave a comment if you have an idea what the background color should be (I am trying to stay away from plain old white)**

Step one, make something that interests you but you aren't invested in.

I am not actually a master of Photoshop CS4, but I did finally make something with it. The new header up top -- which I probably won't keep for long before it starts to bother me -- gives me hope that I will be able to grasp the workings of CS4 eventually. Hey, the window alone was 5 layers! I also followed two tutorials on making rain: one using noise and another using dots.

[edit: It bothered me, I took it down, look below]