I need to make some phone calls, the laundry is piling up, and the car is due for an oil change. But those will have to wait--I'm busy reading blogs.

The word "blog" itself gives one the feeling of a murky forest filled with treacherously hidden hollows of mud waiting to pull the unwary wanderer under, never to be seen again.

Indeed, many blogs are a veritable morass of links and reciprocatory links and thanks-for-the-link links and you're-welcome links. The web traveler is sent from one blog to the next, which refers to yet another; soon he begins to feel panicked and finds himself blindly fighting backwards to get back to the original site, by which time he has forgotten what caught his attention in the first place.

The other day I found myself in a dilemma: should I read Dostoevsky on the possibility of redemption, or the blog of a guy who calls himself the Curmudgeongly Celt on the possibility of repainting his upstairs bathroom? The Celt won, of course; he's probably going to use beige and orange-red. Sounds like an unpleasant color scheme to me, but that's a Celt for you.

What is it about blogging that's so alluring? Hoping that, perhaps, in some small way, you can make a difference in the world? The desire to unleash the latent Creative Potential that heretofore has remained untapped? Creating a forum where anonymous weirdos can leave ads about Web Poker in your guest book using misspelled words and all caps?

I know, I know. There are many well-written and thoughtful blogs out there. The trick is finding them and avoiding getting sidetracked once you've discovered one. But even the best of bloggers is eventually going to succumb to the temptation of linking to a "Which Animal in 'Charlotte's Web' Do You Most Resemble?" quiz. You have a limited amount of time; will you resist the web-wandering by ignoring the link? Or will you take the time to: 1) follow the link, 2) take the quiz, and 3) go back to the blog and post in the comment section that you are Wilbur? (Admit it: you initially were the Speech-Impaired Goose before you went back and changed three of your answers).

Well, enough about this. I want to read about how the bathroom remodeling project is coming along. Then I guess I'd better start dinner...I see from my husband's blog that he's getting tired of take-out.