Every morning between about 11:30 and 12:30, if I open my shades, a small sunbeam falls directly below my desk. Upon hearing the shades being drawn, Kimble magically appears at the sunbeam spot, where he rolls around in feline delight, jockeys for position with my feet, and tries very hard to be run over by my chair.

Speaking of my feet, as you can see from the picture, they are still swelling. For the last month and a half, they have swollen up (along with my hands and face) about once a day, on average, for about 4-6 hours at a time. They have swollen so much, so often, for so long, that they are actually a little bit bruised in the worst areas, from the capillaries having burst. (I have found that moisturizing them every night helps with some of the stretchy-skin discomfort.)

This is actually why I went to the doctor in the first place. She said it was happening because I’m overweight. Which is funny, because I’ve been overweight my entire life, and yet this STUPID FOOT THING just started happening about six weeks ago.

I haven’t yet been able to figure out what’s causing it. It’s happening right now, at about 4PM, and all I have consumed today is:

- Claritin
- Coffee (black)
- Diet Coke
- Roasted new potatoes with olive oil, garlic, and basil (no salt)
- Cherries (fresh, plain)
- About half a gallon of water

So far, using observation and a series of incredibly tedious dietary restrictions, I have systematically been able to rule out:

- Salt
- Sugar
- Dairy
- Wheat
- Corn
- Soy
- Nuts
- Meat
- Hot weather (it’s only 75 today, and a pleasant 72 degrees in the office)
- Inactivity (happens even if I’m in the middle of taking a walk at the time; walking around doesn’t alleviate the swelling, and only makes me crabbier)
- Blood pressure (all my life it’s been 130/90, but at the last visit I clocked in at 128/87, yay me!)

It is not accompanied by shortness of breath, dizziness, chest pain, pain in the arms (or anywhere else), numbness or tingling (except what you’d expect), or fever.. It is not, in fact, accompanied by any other symptom, except crabbiness, but I think that’s more of a side effect of the problem itself, y’know? It happens at any time of day - morning, afternoon, or evening. It exists completely independent of any other factor, and seems to happen totally at random. Elevating them doesn’t help.

I’m pretty much at sea with this one. I got nothin’. I know theoretically I should doctor-shop and find someone else, but our health care only covers 80% of an office visit, and I’m still waiting to get the bill from the last one.

Any and all suggestions are welcome, at this point! (Because what good is a blog if you can’t use it to solicit free medical advice from anonymous strangers on the internet?)

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There’s a surprisingly interesting and compelling discussion on Network Neutrality over on Metafilter. But I think the argument can be summed up entirely by this image, posted by brownpau:

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The connectedness of knitting blogland is wonderful, but it can occasionally feel like close quarters in a stuffy room. Every so often, a kerfluffle is bound to erupt.

The customary chain of events is:

1. Blogger expresses a strong opinion.

2. 99% of commenters concur, or at least offer their support of the blogger’s sovereign right to express opinions (e.g. “I don’t agree, but I thought your post was very interesting and insightful”).

3. Blogger gets genuinely upset at remaining 1% of comments, which are often over-the-top cruel and vicious, and are usually sent anonymously (so that blogger is denied the satisfaction of writing back, calling them out, tracking them down to egg their car, what have you). Writes follow-up post asking people to please stop talking about it already.

For those on the sidelines, these miniature firestorms can be a little bit fearful to watch. One can be forgiven for thinking, “Remind me to never ever post an opinion!” Result: bloggers, frightened it will happen to them, get more boring and conservative. (”Here is a picture of my sock. Today it was sunny. Goodbye!”)

Having lived a significant portion of my life online since I discovered the internet in 1994, I have developed a few strategies that have served me well over the years. For the sake of discussion, we’ll use the “vi versus emacs” debate, which I recently had to carefully sidestep at work a few weeks ago. (vi and emacs are both unix/linux text editors; the vi-versus-emacs split is surprisingly vicious, but not likely to upset anyone here.)

Strong opinion posts fall loosely into one of two categories:

1. “Here’s what I think, and why.”

2. “Here’s what I think, and if you think otherwise, YOU CAN KISS MY RED-HOT ASS, *@#$^#@%CKER!!!!&*(%”

When you’re sitting all alone in the middle of the night, typing up a post, it’s easy to forget that you have an audience. The problem is that you have no idea what your audience is wearing (either literally, or figuratively pinned to their sleeve). What you thought was a Category 1 post may, in the harsh light of the morning, turn out to be a Category 2, instead.

If you’re after a Cat 1 post, the best way to get it is to imagine someone with the opposing view, reading and then responding to your post. Imagine an emacs-user reading my pro-vi post; what’s their reaction? Will she be hurt? Furious? Defensive? Do I care? (If not, am I prepared to handle the inevitable consequences?)

The worse I make the emacs-user look, the more upset and motivated they will be. Perhaps it’s better if I don’t say anything about emacs users at all? I may choose to just write about how much I like vi - its portability, ubiquity, and simplicity. I may even give a polite nod to the emacs users, while still maintaining my position. (”I know a lot of people learn to love emacs, but I don’t really get it. I’ll stick with vi, thanks.”)

When you’re writing your post, remember that there’s a big difference between a “pro-vi” post and an “anti-emacs” post. Fundamentally, people are much less likely to be upset by a “pro” statement than an “anti” statement. It’s the “anti” statements that tend to draw blood. People take it personally, you know? I treat “anti” statements like biological warfare - effective, but not the sort of thing you want to use every day just to make a point.

I use WordPress, which lets me save posts as drafts, and choose to post them later if I like. If feelings are running strong when I’m writing something, I save it as a draft. Later I may groom it into something more socially-acceptable, or I may just delete the damned thing. Either way, “save as draft” is the blogger’s bestest friend.

Don’t be afraid, dear blogger, to express a strong opinion. Just remember that you never know whose toes you’ll be stepping on, so you might want to take out that part where you compare an emacs user to a cowardly astroturfing corporate suck-bitch weasel. (Oops!)

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