I emailed Megan yesterday asking her, hey, up for lunch or errands or something? She emailed me back, then texted me that she was over in a local park today, hey, did I want to hang out. Hecks, yes, I thought, grabbing my late lunch and heading over.

The park is around the freeway from the house, so an easy drive over. It took me longer to find her and the kids at the park than it did to drive over. It's a good thing that Merrick was crying, else I'd never find them. I had called Megan on the phone to see where they were, and heard Merrick over the phone. When I hung up, I paused to listen for his cries, then followed them to find the four of them.

For the record, that boy has some serious lungs.

So, the back cover of John Scalzi's book, The God Engines, reads:

"If J.G. Ballard and H.P. Lovecraft had ever collaborated on a space opera, the results might have been like this: ferociously inventive, painfully vivid, dispassionately bleak and dreadfully memorable."

When Jonathan saw the back of the book, he looked up at me. "If that was all I had to go on, I wouldn't read this book."

Yeah, I have to admit, I wouldn't have read it either.

But, as it turns out, I'm a huge Scalzi fan. Other than telling the same story from a different perspective (hello, Zoe's Tale), the man can do no wrong. I mean, seriously, if the man can write a book that opens with death by fart and still sound like Heinlein, I'm going to read anything he writes.

The book is a short book, probably best illustrated by the $4.99 price on the Kindle version, but really it's only 136 pages of large font, so fairly short, easily readable in under an hour and a half. Given that even books have gone the way of everything American (bigger is better), having a shorter book was a refreshing change. I didn't have to invest hours across severals days to finish the book, which was nice.

The story is a quick read, the characters described and developed well enough, the conflict easily resolved and the twist expected. I enjoyed the rich world hinted at in the story, though: enough to understand what's going on (after a few chapters), but also enough left to the imagination that the reader needs to fill in the history. That filling in part is what I enjoy.

One aspect I though was quite interesting is that the gender of one character in the book is never revealed. There's a picture that indicates the character is a woman, but really, feminine features and long hair do not a woman guarantee. There are no pronouns describing the character, nor any possessives referring to the character. The character, who is the captain's lover, is delightfully what the reader wants the character to be. I liked that aspect, too.

Yeah, so, Scalzi's work is generally science fiction, with a good dose of his humour in it. This one, while also science fiction has some other overtones, somewhat horror-ish, a dash of religion in the plot mechanism, not too much though. It's a darker tale the usual, but that just added to the interesting.

I enjoyed the book, read it quickly, would hand to Andy to read.

BTW, if you want something more specific on the plot, check out the Amazon page or search for the book at your favorite search engine. I prefer just going with books from authors whose previous works I've enjoyed, instead of criticizing the plot before I've even read it (which is why I chose not to include one here). I know I like Scalzi's style of writing, and I trust he won't bore me in the plot, so, I didn't look it up before I bought a copy of the book, I just bought it. If you're local and unsure if you'll like the story, you can borrow my copy.

Sometimes, you do time the picture correctly.

The day after a migraine is always rough. No, no, that's not quite correct. The DAYS after a migraine are always rough. This last one yesterday was rough (that's two for the year, nominally five months apart, this is a good trend compared to previous years), as it was different than my usual ones, and far more painful to add insult to injury. I was at my "standing desk" (read: empty bookcase in the living room where I stand up, as it's the perfect height), typing on some email, when I realized I couldn't see the bottom of the screen. I looked down, I couldn't see my hands.

Usually when I have a migraine, there's a spot in my vision that is gone. Not a spot that's black or a spot that's white, it's a spot that is just gone. I don't see it, and I don't know that I don't see it. When I describe that to people, they don't quite understand, "So it's a white spot?" "No." "So, it's black?" "No." "Grey?" "No, it just isn't there." Think about it this way: what color is the vision beyond your peripheral? What color do you see straight behind you?

You don't. You don't see that color because it isn't color, it's outside your vision. You don't see it, but in this case you know you don't see it. You can't tell me what color it is, though, as it isn't a color, it's just not there.

Same thing with that spot. It's not a color, it just isn't there.

I usually figure out it's not there because the surrounding details don't make sense: an odd word, a missing eye, a smaller field of vision.

That last one is key.

When my vision field is reduced, the rest of my vision comes into sharper focus, with more brilliant colours. It's kinda neat, actually, how intense the rest of my vision becomes, though, really, as a precursor for what's to come, the excitement of the amazing vision wears off really fast.

In one of my typical migraines, that spot increases in size, becomes an arc, that arc separates to become a horn shape, then expands to fill my vision, and I'm lost: my vision is gone, and all I can do is ride it out, wait for my vision to clear in 20 minutes, an hour, a day, I never know how long it'll take.

So, yeah, the auras yesterday were different. It was a blindness sweep from the bottom of my vision around the left side to the top, and was gone. About two hours in, I saw a remnant of a horn, but the headache was bad enough that just noticing it was an impressive feat.

The numbness in my hands will start at my fingertips and move up my arm into my chest and face, and the nausea soon after. I say numbness, but yesterday, I paid attention to it, to figure out if yes, it is numbness or not. For my face, yes, it was indeed numbness, just as with a dentist. Nothing moved correctly, nothing felt right, or really felt at all.

With my hands, though, it wasn't exactly numbness. It was pressure on my hands, not quite like a buzzing, but something close. Not pinpricks, but still small constant pressure. I'll probably pay more attention to it next time.

Today, everything is FUCKING BRIGHT. I'm wearing sunglasses, but it's too bright outside.