Welcome to the wonderful world of Movable Type--so many delightful features to improve communication, so little time to learn how to use them. :-)

In my experience, the best way to add functionality to your blog is to find people whose blogs have that functionality, and borrow heavily. Given the template-driven nature of the software, you often have to ask outright--but most people are flattered by the request, and happy to share.

Trackback is perhaps the most valuable feature that MT provides, and the hardest part is not the technical implementation (though it benefits greatly from tweaking in the templates), but the conceptual piece. Two-way linking is a very new way for people to think about the web. When I taught blog basics to my web design students, they really struggled with Trackback. Not until I used it between two different blogs that I control (my personal blog and the blog I'd set up for the course) did it start to click, and even then they didn't fully grasp its potential and use.

At any rate, welcome to Blogaria. (Or Blogistan, or the Blogosphere, depending on who you ask...or read.) Have fun. But be careful. The reciprocal blogrolling can begin to eat away at your life. Too many good blogs to read, too little time.