Hi Gene,
I went through a bunch of Blog/CMS software recently, and I eventually settled on
Textpattern. For me, it was the most clear and intuitive to use, while still remaining highly flexible and customisable (there are plenty of plugins to choose from). It's XHTML and CSS standards-compliant, seems good for SEO, and the forms and articles features are really handy once you get the hang of them. Took a little while to learn the textpattern tags, but they really are very straightforward, and I found them more intuitive than the Wordpress setup. Worth a look anyway!
Best,
Jacob