One of my earliest memories is of sitting with my father, trying to get my finger through smoke rings he created while puffing on his pipe. It was a game we played, he and I. He doesn't smoke any more and in fact I don't otherwise remember him smoking. Memory is an odd thing.

I remember traveling with my mother and sisters on a train. The train car was arbitrarily separated half way down, by a behind-the-seat partition so that one half was designated for smokers. Unfortunately our family were in the seats just to one side of that partition, on the other side was a portly gentleman chain-smoking cigars. Odour most foul! But he seemed oblivious to our (I'm sure) more than blatant coughs and hand waving etc.

Today I find myself getting ticked off by having to encounter second hand smoke while walking outside. How our world has changed!

Red-letter day!

So my written words went out all across Canada on Thursday morning thanks to Tom Allen and his morning show. In case you missed it ... I'm going to put the letter he took the bit from to read to all the Canadians and re-print it here. I'll bold the bit he read out loud. He said my writing had convinced him of the worth of what I was arguing for! :)

Hello Tom! I still catch bits and pieces of your show these days although I'm not the dedicated listener I was before whichever idiot it was decided that classical music should best be kept within the confines of hours only those 'nearly dead' could listen to - and with the drivel of announcing by Ms. Nesrallah if you weren't almost dead when you turned it on you would be soon. ... okay okay rant done.

I love words. I passionately love words, playing with words, one-upping people with words and (better yet) being one-upped ... I subscribe to the Visual Thesaurus and get a word-a-day sent to me, which almost always is sent on to various friends. I have a quote a day I get on my google home page, which also often gets sent around ... in short, I am a lexophile of the worse order. Why do we drive on parkways and park on driveways? Why can we say "sit up and sit down" and have it mean something? How do English speakers manage to speak to each-other and still understand?! :)

Okay you say. But just where am I going with all this? Well ... I want to defend the indefensible, the poor,lonely much-maligned word 'meh'. It is a GREAT word. It has so many flavours and feelings and moods. It can mean 'so what' and 'who cares' and (that perennial classic) the verbal equivalent of a teenager's shrug. It stands on its own and holds meaning in its three letters. I say ... KEEP MEH. We are the richer, the stronger for it.

This was supposed to be in some blog of yours about 'meh' and other random things you talk about, but me with my Masters degree can't seem to find that blog on the web page ... so you are stuck with me writing to you.

Hockey season winds down at our house. My youngest is due to lose his next and last game (RAH! - shhh I didn't really say that) and my older will probably make it at least to the semi finals but even that is only 2 more weeks. Then ahhhh the joys of summer, unbooked weekends, no freezing in the rinks for hours, no lugging of hockey gear up and down the basement stairs, no stinky basements, no 4:30 a.m. alarm clocks ... no ... oh my heart is all aflutter!!!

My sweetie, Greg, will of course continue to play all summer, but at least he gets himself to his own games.

If you can find this mysterious blog of yours and want to stick my comments around 'meh' into the appropriate slot, feel free. I just wanted to let you know that despite my profound lack of delight over your new format - and the new format of CBC 2 in general - I do still listen. And occasionally I am surprised by hearing things I like. And I do still enjoy listening to your chatter. But, oh how I hearken back to your classical music chatter. Things to learn, chew over, think about ... like the time you did 30 seconds of the famous 4' 33" piece (of silence) for your cage match, and the wonderful responses you got from your listeners! I miss sharing classical music with my son on our drives into school weekday mornings. I MISS classical music being a part of my commute.

sigh ...

yours- a (closet) hockey fan