Well, so far the response to the new template has been unanimously positive. I decided to change it because, well, I was bored with what we had and change is good.  ;)  And my company is starting a blog for parents (anyone interested can check it out here - I designed the top banner) and, anyway, I spent most of my work day last week perusing the internet for good looking templates. That got me to thinking that with a little interpretation of some code I could personalize one of those templates for my own blogs! So that's what I did.