Since I was not too confident about my choice of Serendipity as blog software, I encountered a nice page which may be interesting for you too in case you are in a similar situation: On Open Source CMS you can test plenty of systems and share people’s meaning about your favorite one.
Btw, in the meanwhile I arranged all my troubles and get better and better in working with S9Y. In the near future, I aim to adapt (or replace) the default layout to a more hippier one, matching with my ~page.