I used to not have a phone book.....

in my place. That is until the time I blew the breakers while trying to put in a dimmer switch. All the power was out to my unit and I didn't know where the main breakers were, so I had to call an electrician. And without power, I couldn't exactly go online to find one. From that day, I learned to keep a phone book handy.

That was one expensive dimmer switch.

Interestingly enough, both my mom and my dad used to work for Ma Bell, then US West Direct [the phone book arm of old US West] back in the day. She was an accounts manager for ads, and my dad was a staff artist. He was responsible for designing the ads and such that went to books.

Funny how archaic that all seems now.

Who needs a phone book?

'Lots of people - but the number is dropping in this digital age.

Eric Inman doesn't use one.

"Never. It's just so easy to go online," said Inman, 33, of Denver. "It goes right to recycling. I sit in front of a computer all day. I guess we keep one of the smaller ones, just in case."

In the age of the Internet and the ability to get information just about anytime, anywhere electronically, fewer people are using large, heavy directories to find what they need.

But John Blade of Denver does, about once a month.

"I'm one of those odd people with no computer or cellphone," said Blade, 59. "I'm sure if you asked someone 20 years old, they don't."

It's phone-book season in the metro area. Dex Media started delivering books in January and will continue through the end of this month. Other publishers such as Yellow Book distributed in October.

From 2002 to 2005, the number of times people used their yellow pages fell about 4 percent, according to the Yellow Pages Association, a Berkeley Heights, N.J., trade organization. Internet yellow-page inquiries are up about 64 percent. '