So I think I've found just about everything I need. Cleaned up the CSS quite a bit on my deadcrow site. Still needs some work, but I cleared out a bunch of redundancy and made it much easier to read. I also found an image gallery called Plogger that works really well for what I want. It's the only one I've found so far that clearly states how to integrate into an existing XHTML/CSS site, whereas the others are almost full blown CMS systems in themselves that try to design your whole site for you.
Next on my list is to play with PHP include, so I can seperate the sections of my markup for easier distribution among pages (ie. have the navigation/header section seperate so only one file needs to be updated when there are changes). This is a lower on my priority list now, though, because the image gallery allowed me to trim my previous (and clunky!) gallery page from several html files down to just one.
Another thing on my agenda is to find a drop in blog system that will integrate as easily as the image gallery did. If anyone knows of a good one off hand, suggestions are quite welcome.
- Pickins