St. Colford Medical Center: We treat uvulae, scrota, and giblets.

I’m home sick with the beginnings of a cold and took this opportunity to upgrade our WordPress installation. While I was at it, I took a look at our Web server stats. These were the top ten phrases used on search engines to find us this month:

  • swollen uvula
  • tattoo
  • computers internet blog
  • peace symbols
  • tiger tattoos
  • tattoo pictures
  • carol channing
  • just giblets
  • tiger stencils
  • uvula

I’ve often wondered if anyone besides our unusual friends sees our blog. Any semi-serious citizen journalism cred that my talented and creative husband generates by posting insightful book reviews has got to have been neutralized quickly by my dorky video posts of children cussing.

I’m honored that Carol Channing fans have found us and that I’m spreading the word about harmless (but alarming) uvular edema. Heck, maybe even girly tiger tattoos may become the fashion. Who woulda thunk I’d write the most Google-worthy posts?

Those top ten are great, but get this. There are more awesome phrases farther down the list. Here’s a selection of unusual search phrases that have brought people to us this month more than once!

  • pic of sudafed (I think the ban on over-the-counter sale is actually increasing interest in meth production.)
  • scary images of of people
  • medical wonders
  • crazy lady (I can’t imagine who that would be?)
  • swollen uvula anxiety (See? It’s really scary!)
  • balla powder tingle (Okay, now I’ve gotta try it.)

And of course there a few gems in the one-hit list.

  • sean connery red suspenders (Hot.)
  • batwing pharmacy (This cracks me up, realizing why it’s indexed.)
  • got giblets?
  • how to make a shy girl open up (WTF?)
  • are giblets good for you? (Need you ask?)
  • hooters of dayton ohio (Never been. Don’t think I’ve ever mentioned it either.)
  • abner i m closing the circle movie quote (I don’t know. But I think I want to see it.)
  • i miss kitty (This makes me sad and I wish the visitor had emailed me.)
  • sudafed pe makes me jittery
  • ernest borgnine what he attributes to a long life (You know what it is, right? But I didn’t post about that. I posted about him farting on Ethel Merman.)
  • men with large scrotums (Okay, that’s just eerie.)
  • pain in the giblet doctor

All in all, I think we’re filling a much needed gap in the consumer health web, if not for many physical issues, for mental ones. Shoot. I think we need an award, actually.

Bee-yootiful

Don’t think I blogged about it at the time, but I was a judge at the Boston citywide spelling bee that sent the first kid from this city ever to the Scripps spelling bee in Washington this year. It was really cool cause not only did I get to ring the bell that means “Wrong! You got it wrong!” but I also got to re-pronounce the word and use it in a sentence when asked. Too fun. And our winner was really good.

We didn’t have this word, though… Oh man, I wish we had. Incidentally, this is from this year’s finals of the national bee and this kid went on to win after spelling the word guerdon. What a guerdon is, though, is anyone’s guess.

“Slang” is a snobbish word

“Y’all” is a perfectly good word to use. Every English speaker understands what it means and there is no other word in greater use to uniquely represent second person plural.

Same goes for “their” to represent possessive third person.