Mercury : Big Sky AstroBlog

May

26

pink1 Only slightly less well known is this: Don’t buy a computer when Mercury is retrograde. Not even when it’s irresistibly pink, and on sale. And having been sick for so many days that you completely lost track of the current transits is no excuse. When we got home this afternoon and I realized what I’d done, I should by rights have tendered my astrologer’s badge; instead I laughed. What are you gonna do, right?

And it is beautiful - it’s half the weight of my beleaguered and decaying Compaq, and unlike the Compaq it has a lid that opens without a crowbar and doesn’t have dozens of vertical lines scattered across the display. And come on, folks - it’s pink! There was, of course, a catch: The dreaded Vista operating system that it came with cannot be replaced with XP, though it can on the models with slightly smaller screens. Why ask why? Fortunately it appears all my weird specialized software will run with hideous Vista, and when you change the interface to Classic view it’s not quite as disorienting. So I’m sticking with it. Kinda glad I got the extended warranty, though.

Looks like I’m gonna keep on thumbing my nose at the conventional wisdom about retrograde Mercury this week: the brakes on the car have started to squeak a bit, so I’m off to see our mechanic, Mark. Maybe he’s got some flashy, pink brakes for me.

If someone out there has a contract for me to sign, I can go for the Mercury Retrograde Taboo Trifecta.

What about you? Breaking any Retrograde Rules?

May 26, 2008 | 13 Comments

Oct

29

We’re beginning to pull ourselves back together here in San Diego after a very long, nerve-jangling week. For those of us who live a reasonable distance from last week’s fires, life has gotten back to normal pretty quickly. Students have returned to school, and Qualcomm stadium, which served as the county’s largest evacuation center, is back to hosting football games. In my neighborhood, folks are brushing a little ash off their Halloween pumpkins, washing their cars, and enjoying a cool autumn breeze.

In a way, it’s too bad that we’ve regained our equilibrium quite so quickly. Don’t get me wrong: I’m thrilled the fires are nearly contained and that people have been able to return to their homes! But there is something precious about the moments when a disaster is unfolding, when everyone seems to rise to the occasion and show their best selves. For days it seemed, last week, no one in San Diego had a bad word to say about anyone else. But today, that part of life has returned to normal, too. People are taking the opportunity to pat themselves on the back for all the good works they did down at Qualcomm, while simultaneously taking the opportunity to complain about the “opportunistic homeless deadbeats” who took advantage of the free food by posing as evacuees. On the other end of the spectrum are the growls about all those self-serving local politicos who scrambled for photo-ops with visiting dignitaries (mostly with governor Arnie, not so much the president).

And Mercury retrograde continues to work its mischief, too. Jonny volunteered for an information hotline over the weekend and on Saturday night they began receiving calls from residents of a community very close to an evacuation area. The callers were alarmed because they were smelling smoke and they thought the fires had reignited. But as it happens, it was just that the winds that blew smoke and ash out over the Pacific last week have done a 180, and the air that’s blowing back toward us smells exactly like a fireplace after you’ve doused it with water.

As one reader noted at the end of one of my recent blog entries about the fires, these fires began with Mercury retrograde at the same degree it occupied at the beginning of the last big firestorm in 2003. She didn’t feel we’d learned much from that previous disaster, and in many ways - the county’s overdevelopment, in particular - I agree. But in terms of handling the crisis, the county seems to have pulled through pretty well, all things considered. So is it really too much to hope that, just for a brief while, maybe, the screeching heads on the radio and tv could set aside their squabbling and savor the gratitude and kindness of those days? Do the winds of discourse have to change back to their old direction, blowing fetid, nasty, acrid-smelling invective with them?

So what I would like to say is, simply, thank you. Thank you to the firefighters who were the true heroes of this ordeal, some of them working literally for days at a time with no sleep at all. Thank you to the county, state, and federal officials who pulled together, however imperfectly, whatever their motivation, to minimize the loss of life and danger to property. Thank you to all of my neighbors who manned hotlines, who looked after displaced animals, and made sure folks who’d left their homes in the dead of night at least had a cot to sleep on and something to eat for breakfast. And thanks to my sensitive and compassionate faraway friends and readers who took the time to write and express their concern. I’m just fine, but there are a lot of people in this county who are suffering, so please send them your thoughts and love.

October 29, 2007 | 3 Comments

Oct

19

Damn. Enough with the Mercury retrograde, already! My computer decided last weekend was the perfect time to have a nervous breakdown - deadlines and Mercury Rx be damned. So we spent the whole damn weekend building and configuring a new system. Almost a week later I’m still installing apps and running into stupid-ass problems right and left, annoying little things that have to be reconfigured or reinstalled. It’s been kind of a nightmare.

Astrologers will reflexively caution you against buying computers or cars or whatever when Mercury is retrograde, but the truth is, Mercury often forces the issue. If your car dies and you need it to get to work, you’re probably not going to wait three weeks for Mercury to turn direct. Ditto when your computer takes a massive dump and your entire livelihood depends on getting a replacement up and running, stat. These are some of Mercury’s little jokes. Funny!

Here’s my best Mercury Rx story so far. For weeks I’ve been engaged in an annoying struggle with a client who has always been a pleasure to deal with, but has recently had some kind of meltdown in their accounting department, resulting in the interminable delay of a rather sizable check. Tempers were getting frayed and my mood was gettin’ ugly - then yesterday, at long last, the payment arrived. On my way out the door this morning I thought, “Gee, maybe I’ll swing by the bank and deposit that long-awaited check.”

You know what’s coming. I couldn’t find it. I looked high, and I looked low. I tossed my car, but came up empty-handed. Emerging from the backseat, I caught a glimpse of our garbage can nestled against the curb, awaiting the weekly collection. “Surely not,” I muttered, looking away. Then again… I dashed over, opened the lid, and was relieved to find the can hadn’t yet been emptied. I reached in, pulled out the bag I’d thrown in last night, opened it up - and lying almost on top was the check. Which once was lost but now was found, etc.

My nerves are getting frayed, people.

Here’s something cool, though: On Tuesday, the author proofs for my book arrived! And let me tell you, it is cute. Really cute. Not sickeningly cute, either; nicely cute. The illustrations are - there is no other word for them - adorable. Now it’s time to slog through and reread every last page of the manuscript I put away in January and catch all the blunders I overlooked, the ones my editor probably looked at and thought, “Well, it’s probably the best the poor dear could do.” Mercury retrograde, man - it’s all about going back and revisiting the past, but this time I get to edit it with a nice, new purple Sharpie.

How is Mercury torturing you this retrograde season?

October 19, 2007 | 4 Comments

Jun

25

Apparently brides and grooms will be hurling themselves down the aisle in record numbers on July 7, 2007, under the assumption that (1) 7 is a lucky number; and so (2) a wedding date of 7/7/07 just has to be triple tremendously lucky. One wonders, of course, whether this “luck” would be embraced and celebrated in such numbers if 7/7/07 didn’t happen to fall on a Saturday. Somehow, I doubt it.

Astrologers, of course, use different measurements to evaluate the good vibes of a particular date. Here’s the chart for 7/7/07, cast for (what else) 7:07 p.m. in San Diego:

Bearing in mind that in electional astrology we consider the starting point of the marriage to be the moment that vows are exchanged, let’s assume this is the moment when our deliriously happy couple blurts the fateful words, “I do!”

I wouldn’t have recommended this as a wedding date for a couple of reasons. The first, of course, is that Mercury is retrograde. Weddings are enough of a logistical nightmare without dragging along retrograde Mercury in his most mischievious trickster mode; and from what I’ve seen, marrying while Mercury is retrograde really does carry his impish, upside down, car key-hiding, email gobbling energy into the union like toilet paper stuck to the bottom of your shoe. In short: while Mercury retrograde is not the kiss of death for a wedding chart (that would be Venus retrograde), I avoid it as much as possible.

Second, this chart lacks an approaching harmonious angle between the Sun and Moon - in my experience, the single most important factor in a wedding chart (other than making sure Venus isn’t retrograde). This chart is just ten hours or so after a quarter moon, in fact, when the Moon and Sun formed a contentious square. And even though the aspect is past, let’s face it… the Moon in Aries and the Sun in Cancer go together like chalk and cheese.

That said, there are things to like about this chart. Aries isn’t the best sign for the Moon in a wedding chart (too much “me” energy), but here it harmonizes beautifully with Venus, Saturn, and Neptune, ending on a good aspect to Pluto. At 7:07 pm the Sun is in the 7th house (there’s that 7 again!), the traditional house of marriage, and the rulers of the 1st and 7th houses (Moon and Saturn) - representing the wedding couple’s rapport with one another - are in easy trine aspect. Nice.

All in all, I wouldn’t go so far as to say it looks like the best wedding date ever. But I’ve seen worse charts end in happy marriages, so let’s send a shout-out to all those lucky couples who will be rolling the marital dice that day.

June 25, 2007 | 3 Comments

keep looking »

Sign of Leo

Moon sextiles Mercury at
4:20 pm on Jul.5, 2008

Moon opposes Neptune at
5:22 pm on Jul.5, 2008

Moon trines Pluto at
3:05 am on Jul.6, 2008

Moon goes void of course at
3:05 am on Jul.6, 2008

Moon enters Virgo at
4:04 am on Jul.6, 2008

Moon conjuncts Mars at
9:19 am on Jul.6, 2008