Reading blogs is like listening in on millions of different conversations -- one by one.

Some are riveting, others deadly dull, with topics ranging from last night's dinner to a school superintendent's contract brouhaha to whether the term "pop" is preferable to "soda."

To centralize the Pittsburgh conversations taking place in these online journals, a group of local bloggers last month launched www.pghbloggers.org. There, cyberspace travelers can find Web links to more than 85 blogs written by Pittsburgh-area people.

"The variety of backgrounds of the people who are writing weblogs in Pittsburgh, the political views and social views are so wide-ranging, it's fascinating to read what people think," said Mike Woycheck, 29, a database technologist from Ross who put together the Pittsburgh Webloggers site.

Or what they eat.

"Last night we had Chicken a la King. Used chicken thighs, and homemade sauce from reduction plus some chicken gravy from a can. Then sauteed white mushrooms with a splash of dark soy sauce. Poured chicken over Pepperidge Farm whole multi-grain dark wheat bread and then added mushrooms on top ..." writes Zachary Uram, 29, at his blog, Yoda's Manifold.

He describes himself as a "single, conservative, evangelical Christian guy" and shares his thoughts on filmmaker Michael Moore as well as a picture of a friend's adorable 2-year-old daughter in China.

Some blogs read like diaries, others like treatises.

"When it comes to hiring and firing a school superintendent, the City of Pittsburgh has a longer-running soap opera than Mt. Lebanon. What the two districts seem to have in common, judging from information available in the media: School Boards that prefer that their Superintendents work with the system. No rocking the boat allowed," writes Michael Madison, 42, of Mt. Lebanon in his blog, Pittsblog.

Politics, punditry, silliness and savoir faire -- all manner of minutiae and topics gargantuan are out there for everyone in the blogosphere.

"There's passion that gets to come out through a blog -- almost more flavor than people can put into a publication that's going to be sold," said Cindy Closkey, 38, a Web site designer from Butler . "Most bloggers have opinions and they want to express them and share them with more people.

"It's like when you read a book or watch a movie, what you're looking for isn't the story, but making friends with the main character," said Closkey, whose random culture blog, "My Brilliant Mistakes," includes The Billy Nayer Show's hilarious "Ham" song and the plush toy, Mr. Toast. "You read someone's blog because you want to know what they think about things."

The presidential election and the war in Iraq have proven fertile fodder for blogs and bloggers coverage of both political national conventions helped propel blogs into the American mainstream.

In early 1999, there were only about 20 to 30 blogs in the entire country. Today, there are millions, but exactly how many is impossible to know, said Rebecca Blood, blogging expert, San Francisco writer and author of "The Weblog Handbook."

Technorati.com, a blog search engine, tracks close to 5 million blogs. About 11 percent of Internet users, roughly 50 million people, are regular blog readers, according to a Pew Internet & American Life Project study. Technorati.com also reports that a new blog is created every 7.4 seconds and about 12,000 new blogs are created each day.

Interest in blogs has increased, too. The word "blog" -- which Merriam-Webster defines as "a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer" -- was the most looked up word on the dictionary maker's Internet site this year.

The number of blogs began to mushroom in mid-1999 after software was developed to make creating and maintaining them easier, Blood said.

"Today, you don't have to be a super technical person to create a blog," Closkey said.

Some design limited-access blogs for a select group of friends and family. Others create personal as well as professional blogs.

Madison, an associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh law school, has his personal blog, Pittsblog, as well as a legal issues blog, Madisonian Theory.

"When you get out onto the Internet, you're exposed to this incredibly diverse group of people and you have to know a little bit to find people who are interested in the same things you're interested in," said Madison, who teaches intellectual property and technology law. "You end up connecting with groups of very diverse people, who in some particular respect are very similar.

"I've met people through my blog that I wouldn't have met otherwise," he said. "I've met other people in Pittsburgh who are interested in the same public policy issues that I am. I've had coffee with them.

"It's a way for me to expand my own personal universe of knowledge and interesting people."

Blogs are very good at creating communities because they're regularly updated and have a personal tone, Blood said.

"A downside of web logs, and the Internet as a whole, is it's easy for these echo chambers to be created," she added. "We tend to agree with things we already think, so I think people tend to read web logs that generally reflect their point of view."

Blood expects the number of blogs to continue to grow.

"In 10 years they will be so ubiquitous they will be unremarkable," she said.

Blogs are really about self-expression, whether they're about politics, the Pittsburgh Steelers or gardening and have two, 12 or 12,000 readers.

"Everybody has a story to tell," Blood said. "Web logs allow people to tell those stories online."