I'm a Web cruising fool

It's amazing how the Internet sneaks up and takes over our lives. Well, at least mine. I honestly don't know what I did with my time before I became hooked.

My Internet day starts the moment I wake. While the coffee is brewing in the French press, I'm already signed on and checking my g-mail. I use that account mostly for YorkieTalk user notification messages. I can see if there are any new replies to my favorite threads.

After making a few replies, I then check my profile messages. Usually, there's a few. It used to be that PMs were the only way to communicate outside of the forums, but I hardly get any of those any more.

By the time the coffee is ready, I'm already checking out new posts. I make this quick because I've got a lot to check out before our morning walk.

From there, I often go to another dog forum. It's set up almost identically to YT, complete with many of the same updates. It's mainly big-dog people who hang out there, and I appreciate the different perspective. But, don't worry, YT is my first love and where I spend most of my time.

After that I move on to my own blog at the newspaper. After just over a year, it's finally getting some traffic. I've had more than 10,000 hits the last two months in a row, and a couple thousand of those are unique visitors. So I reply to a few of the comments and move on.

I do a quick check of my main family e-mail account and another account I use for Alaska dog people. Usually not much traffic there, but I gotta check.

About then, the dogs are hovering and let me know about it. It's time for their 11 a.m. walk.

But around noon, if there are no errands to run, I'm back on the 'Net. I check a Yahoo group set up for Alaska dog people to arrange meetups and reply to a few of those.

Then there's myspace. I have a lame page and don't spend much time there, but I occasionally get a message from a nephew or niece.

Somewhere in there, I check maltesetalk.com. It's run by the same folks who run YT and set up identically. Morkie4 enticed me into checking it out, and I set up an account. So I check my profile page over there and scan for new maltese pictures. For a diehard Yorkie fan, I do admit they are cute.

After that, I check my newspaper's site for breaking news. We've turned into a 24-7 news agency, so there's always something new.

I save my work e-mail for last because that usually brings bad news. Someone called in sick. Or another cutback is on the way. Sometimes I don't even check this one if I have bad feelings.

Once at work, I'll have a hundred e-mails to deal with during the course of the day, but I usually sneak some time to check g-mail and YT.

At the end of the day, I usually repeat the process from the beginning and add simondandhallie.com to the menu. Kim's kept up an incredible blog for quite a while now, and it always cheers me up to see what the monkeys are up to.

When I first started exploring the Internet, I never used to understand what people meant by "cruising the 'Net." Now I do. I'm a cruising fool.