Found a silly old pic from around 20 years back............
 

A belated birthday thought to one passed. And to this day deeply missed.

The press of work, added to the flu crud from the depths of the Underworld have kept me from posting anything creative or intelligible for far too long. I'll be getting back to things over the next few days as what's left of my working brain cells get cleaned out. The new photo is by the amazingly talented Geof Stone. Thanks to gerisullivan for getting me a copy.

 Ocular Migraine?  Never heard of it. Till yesterday. About mid afternoon yesterday, I'm working away at my computer when focusing got fuzzy and a white flashing curtain descended on the upper right quadrant of my vision. There were flashing shapes running thru it. Kinda like when you push against your eyes to make phosphenes in the dark. I took the glasses off, went out to the dimmer corridor, and it faded back to mostly normal in around 15 minutes.  I called the Med-line from my insurance and they muttered things at me like "detached retina" and get your butt "into the doctor NOW!" 
I went to tell my boss I was leaving and he offered to save the hour a bus trip would take and took me straight to the clinic. It took only 15 minutes by direct run. The clinic sent me across the street to the ER. A two hour wait followed with another brief repeat episode during that time. The ER doc checked mostly for some type of stroke. After assuring me that was not the problem, and taking a brief look at my eye. I was herded into a shuttle bus across the river to the Eye Clinic at the U of M.  When I got there the initial wait was short and they gave me a once over and put in drops to dilate my eyes. Another 25 minute wait ensued while the drops took effect. The exam was not too bad at first, but when he actually tried to put something on the eye surface itself, I couldn't handle that very well, and teared up too much for him to get a definitive look. He WAS able to see that the retina was fine and and informed me  what I experienced was essentially a migraine without the headache. Blood vessels press against the optic nerve causing the flashing, but no pain.  I had migraines in college, but never got flashing lights as some do. Half my face would go numb and then in minutes the pain would crash in. The doctor says these Oculars are not uncommon in people with a history of migraines. He warned me that while there was no way to be certain, I might be in for another cycle of the little beasties. Oh Joys!  At least the major worry of a detached retina was dispelled. My vision is lousy enough. I don't need to have it go from blurred to blind. I thank the Gods that was not the case. He did tell me that as nearsighted as I am I am considered high risk for detachment, and I did the right thing by coming right in. I then made my blurry eyed way home on the bus. It was nearly 7 PM before I got to the house. Since I couldn't really read, or watch TV or look at the computer, I did some dishes, sat vacantly with a cat on my lap, and crashed around 10.
  So how was your Monday?

It's all 

starstraf

 http://www.becomeanmm.com