Call me a geek, but I'm really very excited about this:

August 18-22, the Portland Water Bureau and the Oregon Trail Chapter of the American Red Cross are having a BLOG OFF to see which is the best!

See, the Water Blog gets all kinds of attention for being an innovative way to communicate with customers about something that's usually pretty damn boring (it's a utility, for cryin' out loud). I mean, they post things like photos of the now-infamous Mt Tabor skinny dippers, and trivia on topics like "how often are Portland's iconic Benson Bubblers cleaned?" (answer: every two weeks). The Oregonian has called it "the city's most interesting blog..." and we've called it "pretty rad..." in the past.

All that attention, it seems, has made the folks at the Red Cross blog incredibly jealous. (See: "Oh, Water Blog. You are our biggest competition.") They blog fun stuff too, like intra-office pranks, safety tips, and info on the Breaking Dawn book release party blood drive.

So! The Red Cross Blog challenged the Water Blog crew to a blog off. And you, my friends, get to pose some of the challenges.

From Team Water Blog, Sarah Bott writes:

We'd like to let the readers of Willamette Week and The Mercury blogs decide, and to define the judging categories. For example, on Monday, August 18 both should blog about x topic, and on the 19th both should blog about y topic, etc.

What should the criteria and the topics be? We'd like to let the people tell us in a pre-contest poll.

Not to be outdone, Lise Harwin of Team Red Cross Blog adds:

Just wanted to throw out some daily blog assignments that we thought of for inspiration:

* Create a Top 10 list
* Write a post that must contain five words of the moderators' choice

Feel free to be creative and tough -- I know that Robin and I will be up for the challenge, though I'm not so sure about the Water Blog folks...

- Lise

Oh, it is ON. (And dear lord, I'm a geek.)

So, readers, let it rip! Post your challenge suggestions in the comments (and then, apparently, Corey Pein at WW--who has already stipulated "no haikus"--and I will cooperate in an unprecedented way to come up with the week's line-up).

AND! To crank up the competition another notch, vote for your favorite pre-challenge blog. Let's find out who the underdog really is... (poll closes Friday afternoon at 3 pm).

Which Blog is Better?