Hi, Please take a look at my site www. a d o b e n e r d s.com and comment on ad placement. if someone is willing to improve let me know I can pay for the job. The site is design using css so changing the color will be no problem.
For better blending change your content's text to size 2 arial font (this will match up with the adsense ads on the left).
i think if you can afford to widen your template it will be better so that you can add a square ad unit in your content... make your link color different from your content/text color so that it will be more noticeable, but make sure that it is still in combination with your whole layout and make all links one color for blending purposes...