Okay, 3 hours later.....
I found that Blogline's Search tool seemed to be the easiest for me. Technorati was the most difficult. I did a search on the cruise ship we will be on in 3 weeks and found tons of information on the different blogs. I used Google's news search and came up with more news than I wanted to know!! I see that in a later "thing" we will be working on Technorati, so I guess it will be easier after that lesson!
I am spending way over 18 hours on this..........;-)