I have a Hotmail account. And although I’ll check my Pitt e-mail account several times a day,… I have a Hotmail account. And although I’ll check my Pitt e-mail account several times a day, I try not to check my Hotmail more than two or three times in a 24-hour span, and only when on my way out the door.

Before I leave for class or work, I give myself about five minutes of Hotmail time — just enough to read and make a short response to anything new that’s hanging out in my inbox. Checking it in the early evening or in the middle of a lazy Saturday afternoon can cause trouble. I so easily get sucked into surfing the MSN site.

Part of the problem is the Hotmail page setup. You are no longer taken to your inbox when you sign into your account. Instead you’re transported to a preliminary page that shows you how many pieces of mail are in your inbox or junk mailbox, all the while neatly displaying a few of the day’s highlighted articles in the left-hand margin. Typically, there’s a news story, maybe a health or sports story and something directed at women.

With a 15- or 20-minute window of time, one of those stories will creep under my skin and force me to click. Today, it was “Ex-‘Bachelorette’ breaks up.” I was intrigued — I watched Meredith Phillips on “The Bachelorette” (and I just wrote a column saying that she and hubby Ian McKee were still together). After a quick browse through my mail, I had to go back and read the celebrity gossip.

And after that, it was all over.

I started to wonder what else would be interesting to read on MSN Today. I scrolled down the left side of the MSN Home page until I found the “Women” link. From there, features on the subpages of “fashion and style,” “beauty,” “health and wellness,” “relationships” and “careers and money” glared at me in appetizing headlines.

Beauty: “How can you make large pores appear smaller?” Relationships: “No roses, please: A nonromantic’s take on romance.” Fashion: “Tie on a little flair: Scarves are back!”

I was suddenly clicking away. “Pores” took me to the “beauty” section. I learned about the importance and types of pore-refiner and oil-blotting sheets, and then I had to see what else “beauty” had to offer.

Did you know there are hair and skin care products made from chocolate? Chocolate’s antioxidants are great for your skin and make you smell yummy, too.

A few articles after chocolate skincare, I remembered that “no roses” thing I spotted on the home page. I clicked on the “relationships” section, and I was immediately drawn to a little headline that told me to take a quiz in order to figure out how my guy wants to experience romance on Valentine’s Day — and on and on it went.

I ended up scrutinizing all the regurgitated and re-packaged dieting and exercise tips on the “health and wellness” page, the career-move strategies in “careers and money,” and every other little bit of self-involved fluff that MSN Women had to offer.

And it’s just that. Fluff. Wonderful, sinfully entertaining, in-one-ear-and-out-the-other fluff.

I don’t need tips on reducing pores (not that I’m saying mine are perfect, I just don’t think they’re a problem). I’m not going to spend ridiculous amounts of money on chocolate skin care. I don’t need someone else to confirm what I already know about the way my boyfriend likes to experience romance (watch out for those Valentine’s Day marketing schemes that tell you what your man really needs — you know him better than they do!) And I’m not going to remember those fat-burning tips the next time I visit the Pete.

But it’s so much fun to read. So much fun that I have to seriously curb my MSN activity, or I end up endlessly jumping around, clicking and re-clicking the “back” button on my browser until I’ve squeezed every last bit of superficial, self-indulgent knowledge out of the site. And then I forget it.

See the dilemma? In the midst of a hard day of class, work and trying to catch bits of CNN during breakfast and lunch, a minute or two of girlie time can become euphorically intoxicating, ensnaring me into wanting more, more, more! It’s like opening that box of Oreos — you know it’s bad for you, you shouldn’t eat more than one or two, but before you realize it you’ve been eating for a half-hour and devoured an entire row of artery-clogging comfort food.

That’s why I usually budget my intake of sweets and my MSN time. Unfortunately, I think I’m going to have to continue to trick myself out of not overindulging in either.

If you’re on or near a computer and feel a sudden urge to click on MSN or any other general “news” Web site, Erin asks that you take a minute to think about the consequences of your decision. E-mail her at [email protected] so she can accompany you on a jog (or share her box of cookies).