There are things that I like about it, and things that I don't. The content is hard to read, because it's a light font on a light background, there's a tiny bit of contrast, but not as much as there should be for a content area. The dateline, is weird, I think that it'd look better if July came out as one color, not having the J black, and the rest orange, and the right side of the content is rather close to the scrollbar, perhaps adding 5-10px of padding to the right side of the contents div.. As far as the background goes, I think that it came out great, and I love the blend into the blog area. Overall, it's a good layout, just do something with the content/blog area.