Edmehton

No, the past blog hiatus was not due to divorce (see Valentine's Revenge). Natalie and I have been neglectful due to a general lack of free time, sickness and focus on other parts of our lives. Care to know what's been up? Meh.

Two weekends ago, I woke up to a killer sore throat ("it hurts when I breathe") and a weird pain and numbness in my face. A quick call to HealthLink for a bit of reassurance ended with the friendly, yet insistent, RN telling me to get myself to the nearest hospital emergency room immediately.

"Would you like me to call you an ambulance?"

"No, I'm sure I'll be fine on my own."

"Is your vision ok?"

"Sure it is. I'm calling about my throat."

I learned later that the numbness in my face made the nurse worried that I may have been having a stroke. I'm glad I didn't learn that later or I might have been more concerned and gone straight to the hospital instead of driving Natalie to her class on my way to the hospital.

Summary: no stroke, just a combo sinus and throat infection.
Medical solution: wait it out, drink ginger tea, die a slow and painful death
Nine days later: I have the remnants of a cold, I feel a bazillion times better

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Natalie and I are in the middle of a new condo search in downtown Calgary.

Wow, that sentence use to excite me. Now it just makes me shiver.

The other day, this gem of an article from Mario Toneguzzi appeared in the Calgary Herald:

For the first time ever, the average sale price of a Calgary condominium has cracked the $300,000 barrier — an astonishing more than 40 per cent growth from one year ago. Figures released Friday by the Calgary Real Estate Board also show that the single-family market in the city continues to be very strong with the average sale price now more than $435,000.

We've had a meeting with our realtor (Gerald), we've narrowed down our requirements (a man needs his in-suite laundry) and we've even looked at a place near our current abode (meh). We're confident that Gerald will help us find a place that is great and has good value, but we have to be realistic: there's not a lot on the market and more buyers than sellers. Fortunately for us, we're in no big hurry to find a new place (as long as our landlords don't realize the steal we're currently getting on rent).

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We are days away from our trip to tour the Canadian battlefields of France and Belgium. The excitement is building, despite the shadow presented by the ongoing teacher's strike in Parkland School Division. To clarify, Natalie and I will be joining an educational trip organized through Memorial Composite High School. With dad being a teacher and organizer of the trip, the current strike is posing some problems. Fingers are crossed that everything is resolved soon and Natalie and I can tour France with mom and dad.

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"Meh", the ubiquitous web slang, received significant coverage in the Guardian yesterday.

How was my weekend? Meh. The mehness of it is indescribable. Just one big, fat meh. If you are an old-media kind of reader, "meh" won't mean a whole lot to you. The word has appeared in the national press three times in the past year. If you gain new vocabulary from conversation, it is probably unfamiliar. If you can't be torn from the web, however, you will almost certainly know it, and its meaning.

Meh means rubbish. It means boring. It means not worth the effort, who cares, so-so, whatever. It is the all-purpose dismissive shrug of the blogger and messageboarder. And it is ubiquitous. On the I Love Music messageboard, for example, 4,010 separate discussion threads feature the use of "meh".

While mostly notable for the fact that this is not news (as Nicole points out, Ben has been using "meh" in conversation for years), it was thrilling for this ex-Edmontonian to learn that the Alberta capital has played an key role in the popular use of this word:

No one is quite sure where it comes from. Graeme Diamond, principal editor of the new word group at the Oxford English Dictionary, says it's not yet suitable for the OED, but he does have a "meh" file, and the first recorded print usage occurred in the Edmonton Sun newspaper in Canada in 2003: "Ryan Opray got voted off Survivor. Meh."

That's right: Edmonton and, more specifically, the Edmonton Sun are on the cutting edge of language. Dare I say, the bleeding edge. That's edgy.

And so, if I may use Natalie's wit, I dub this post: Edmehton.