Happy Canada Day!

[fajrdrako]

After feeling miserable for a good part of the day, I got better. Much better.

maaseru came home, and we (meaning maaboroshi and John) had pizza for supper, and we played a game of Scrabble - my suggestion. Part of the fun was making fun of the pseudo-words included in the Scrabble dictionary, words like 'jetlike', 'uniquest', and 'mm'. There are no linguistic depths to which players will not stoop to make points.

You know how, when you get a migraine, you lose your vision neurologically to a jagged-light visual effect? I got that during the Scrabble game, making it often difficult to see the tiles - but, surprisingly, it marked the end of my migraine, not the beginning. These things are so bizarre! It's so much easy to feel cheerful without pain. I won the game, being pretty much neck and neck with maaboroshi until the last turn, when I put SPRINTS on a triple- word square.

When the fireworks started on Parliament Hill, we went out on maaseru's balcony to watch. Beautiful! With many heart-shaped and spiral fireworks - I called them Pictish - I do love fireworks. At one point a bat flew by, looking confused by the lights and noise. But how can you really tell when a bat is confused?

It was uncharacteristically cold today. Usually Canada Day is hot; this was mostly jacket-wearing weather, and I watched the fireworks with a blanket wrapped around me.

Canada has existed for 140 years. It's been 150 years since Ottawa was founded. So far so good!

Comments

[monsieureden.livejournal.com]

Yeah I look forward to maybe seeing some fireworks on Wed, even though this year I'm not going to an actual show (as I did last year). It was chilly here too.

LMAO @ the look of a bat looking 'cornfused' as he flew by...

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Fireworks are such fun! Where do they have the actual show in your parts? Is it a city thing? Or State? Living in Ottawa - and not to far from Parliament Hill - I sort of get this bonus fee show that everyone else has to go downtown for, or get it on television, which in the case of fireworks, just isn't the same. How do Americans do it?

Yeah, the poor bat, we don't usually have so much going on in the sky at night around here. Sound and light show for him!

[monsieureden.livejournal.com]

It's city where I come from, we have the big Detroit fireworks which you either go downtown on the river for or watch on tv (or as I did one year, climb to the top of the Science and Engineering building at my old university - you can see Detroit from there looking south :)). Otherwise, every suburban city has their own show, different days leading up to the fourth.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

It sounds like fun! I think the only fireworks I've seen in the States were at Disney World, and they were very impressive.

[monsieureden.livejournal.com]

Yes the Disney ones are pretty impressive. :)

[mmegaera.livejournal.com]

My auras (the jagged light thing) can come anywhere up to a week either before or after the actual headache. They do what they do...

I'm glad you enjoyed your fireworks. I'm looking forward to ours on Wednesday.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Yes, me too, my auras never really seem to match up with the pain the way one would expect. No neat and tidy neurological patterns here! I hope your head is doing okay these days.

And yes, enjoy your fireworks on Wednesday. Do you have to go somewhere public to see them? Or do people do private displays?

[mmegaera.livejournal.com]

You're the only other person I know of whose auras don't line up just ahead of their headaches like proper little neurological phenomena.

I will be going to the local military base to watch their fireworks with a friend who has a base pass (the military does splendid fireworks [g]). People do private displays where they're legal (which is mostly in the unincorporated parts of the county), but my townhouse development has a restriction against them in our covenants, so I don't get to do my own.

The best way to deal with private fireworks displays that I've ever run across was when I lived in a small town in Montana. Everybody went to the local football field, the town brought the fire truck and the EMT truck just in case, and everybody set theirs off there, where everybody could watch everybody else's and the danger and mess were contained, then the town set off a public display. It was wonderful. Very sensible and a great deal of fun.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

You're the only other person I know of whose auras don't line up just ahead of their headaches like proper little neurological phenomena.

Yes. Just about everything I've ever heard of about migraines describes that as the pattern. And sometimes it works that way. But not very often. Sometimes I get the aura and no pain at all. Sometimes I get the aura and no pain, but I lose all energy or ability to do anything and just have to sleep. Sometimes I get the aura way before head pain, or way after it. More often these days I get a sort of mini-aura, like a neurological change that is vaguely uncomfortable for a moment, and I think, "Oh no, a migraine" but it just goes away in a few seconds and that's that.

Go figure.

A military base! That's very cool.

A football field would be good, too.

I love these things.

[mmegaera.livejournal.com]

Well, it's nice to know I'm not a freak. Or at least not a unique one [g]. I haven't had the mini-auras (at least not to the best of my knowledge or recollection), but I've had the other phenomena you describe.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I suspect migraines are a little different in anyone who has them - or at least the atypical ones. I was surprised to read on Wikipedia that only 1/3 of people who get migraines get the aura at all.

[slartibartfast.livejournal.com]

150 years? Is that it? Buahaha *pets the baby country*

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

No, the country is only 140 years old. Makes us older than Italy! The city is 150 years old - just a baby in the grand scheme of things - I always envy European cities with Roman aqueducts and roads and such. Or pre-Roman stuff. We do have some rather old fossils. (And I don't mean the guys in the Senate.)

[slartibartfast.livejournal.com]

I love Canada, just to be clear. XD Am going there in a few weeks.

However, one of the things I love about England is its looong history. I live on the site of an old Roman road, near Maiden Castle which was taken over by the Romans but was around long before then. So this is definitely one of the older areas in the country. XD I live near a church that's been around since the 13th or 14th century too.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

That's one of the things I like about England, too. The sense of everything reaching back through time. Being in buildings that are hundreds of years old and still in use. Even though I love Canada, I'd trade in a minute.

[mmegaera.livejournal.com]

What was it someone said recently on the Bujold list? In Europe 100 miles is a long way, in North America 100 years is a long time ago? OWTTE.

[monsieureden.livejournal.com]

All this talk about migraines makes me think of Lymond (and Eden).

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

You know, if I could think of any characteristic that I could share with Lymond, there's a long list of stuff I'd rather have - courage, beauty, charisma, musical or mathematical talent, linguistic skills, the ability to quote verbatim the whole of world literature, acrobatics, swimming, sexual charm, or ability to act. Migraines? Really, really low on the list.

But at least it's an ailment with literary resonance!
'

[monsieureden.livejournal.com]

You don't have sexual charm?

Yeah, I can't think of what it is about heroes having headaches, but I found myself writing it into Eden's life as well. Though I can claim to have a medical reason for doing it, still...

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

You don't have sexual charm?

I'd like to think I did. After all, I've spent my lifetime trying to cultivate it! But if I did.... wouldn't I be surrounded by lustful acolytes people to have sex with?

Or maybe it's just that life isn't that easy!

I like fictional heroes with headaches. I really do. Did you ever read Tanithy Lee's novel Cyrion? The hero is a Lymond-doppelganger who has, yes, migraines. It's great.

[monsieureden.livejournal.com]

I have not read that, and it appears no local libraries to me have it. ;(

[monsieureden.livejournal.com]

And the only reason Eden and Lymond are surrounded by all these lustful people is because they have authors forcing it along. You and I are none so lucky. :( :(

[mmegaera.livejournal.com]

Fajrdrako, I haven't read Dunnett (I've tried, but apparently one has to be in the appropriate frame of mind, and I haven't hit it yet), but does she describe Lymond's migraines accurately, IYO?

The only literary migraines I've ever run across that were described properly were in a romance novella, of all places. One of the -- few -- things that bugs me about Bujold is her casual use of the term. Migraine/=just any bad headache, and I desperately dislike her use of the word pseudomigraine for the aftereffects of stun [wry g].

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I haven't read Dunnett (I've tried, but apparently one has to be in the appropriate frame of mind, and I haven't hit it yet)

It's all a matter of taste. I think if you 'need to be in the appropriate frame of mind', you won't ever get there and there's no reason to try. The style either works for you or it doesn't. If it isn't easy, don't bother. There's no point.

For me, her books are perfect. But other people's experience is often different, and I know of some fans who had to start and stop reading several times, or who came to love the books after the third or fourth one, or who like the Nicholas books but not the Lymond books, and every variant reading pattern you can think of... So don't listen to me.

does she describe Lymond's migraines accurately, IYO?

I don't think she ever describes them from his point of view at all. He hides them from other people - especially their debilitating effects - and since the books almost always show Lymond from the point of view of other characters, we don't get much in the way of descriptions of how it feels for him. As the series continues we learn he has 'headaches which lead to blindness', and he does mention that stress or shock can bring them on, and other factors (like sex) can sometimes end a session - which I have found to be true.

[mmegaera.livejournal.com]

It's all a matter of taste. I think if you 'need to be in the appropriate frame of mind', you won't ever get there and there's no reason to try. The style either works for you or it doesn't. If it isn't easy, don't bother. There's no point.

I know. But I *want* to like her so badly [g].

I don't think she ever describes them from his point of view at all.

Ah. Too bad, actually. And, yes, I do agree with you about the other factors.