Definition of recession

It feels like a recession doesn't it? High gas prices, high food prices, mortgage crises, the sagging American peso and low wage growth affect most all of us pretty directly. Recession is a vague term in a discipline that is rarely vague, but in general it describes a slump in economic activity, generally measured in real GDP growth. Strictly speaking, it should be at least two successive quarters of negative GDP growth. Quarterly GDP numbers were released yesterday and it is hard to see "recession" in this graph. I guess we need a different word to describe an economy that feels really bad, but is still growing just fine, and in fact appears to be on the mend.