Sun trine Uranus

So it's Saturday and I get some time to myself and decide Ama and I need an engagement calendar of some kind to share, me having so many important sing-alongs to attend and Ama about to go back to work full time.

There are still huge banks of snow in the roadways and some sections of sidewalk are barely cleared, but with no stroller to deal with it's an easy walk to Harvard Square, where the Uranian sound of revolution is audible from blocks away. Of course, as this was a good 18 hours ago and I am much more concerned about remembering the words to One Little Turtle Said to Another I've already forgotten the chant, but it was along the lines of  "No, no, no no no, Mubarak has got to go," may my Aquarian Moon forgive me.

Politely murmuring "Excuse me, excuse me" I sidled through the protestors and into the stationery store that has the "Please Eschew Cell Phone Use While in the Store" sign on the door, where I whiled away a couple of hours trying to decide whether to buy a lined white yellow pad for $1.69 or a quad ruled one for $2.19, hoping if I waited long enough the $5.95 desk-top calendar I had my eye on would go on sale as one-twelfth of it was no longer useable.

By the time I left the store with the full-price calendar and white lined yellow pad, the revolutionary aspect of Uranus had disappeared, to be replaced with its surprising and unusual side in the form of a package on the porch at 326. Inside: the most astonishingly beautiful HAND-KNITTED sweater and pleated skirt - A HAND-KNITTED PLEATED SKIRT - IT'S 2011! - EVEN IN CAMBRIDGE CHILDREN WEAR MASS-PRODUCED MADE IN CHINA ACRYLIC FLEECE NUMBERS FROM COSTCO - for Star Child (thank you Eileen); a never-in-a-million-years-would-I-think-it-would-fit-me-but-it-does-and-perfectly hand-knitted two-tone blue jumper for me (thank you Irene); a pastel rainbow Beanie Baby bear for Star Child (thank you Maria) and perhaps most surprisingly Uranian of all, five pairs of Bridget Jones-ish undies with lace trim at the legs and waist, except they were nylon and I think Bridget wore cotton, which is what Irene thought they  were when she bought them. So as I've already told her, thanks, Irene, I love you loads, but I don't think even Uranus can get me to wear nylon undies. Good cause here they come.

Mars trine Neptune, Mercury sextile Mars

Six more inches of snow, on top of what was here when TJ and I drove up on Monday. Ama had the day off and she, me and Star Child spent the day cozy and warm inside, with cars creeping along Concord Avenue and the snow piling up on the skylights making the living room dim and murky and even more inviting.

I introduced Star Child to the Teletubbies on youTube, and she snuggled up next to me in the armchair, thumb firmly in mouth, eyes wide open, jabbing her spitty finger onto the screen and repeating after me 'Tinky Winky, Dipsy, LaLa, Po' and getting them right most of the time. She repeats everything said to her now, up to five or six syllables, and while it's not immediately intelligible Ama and I between us can usually come up with the meaning. Ama is so much more relaxed than she was when she first got back from Nepal with Star Child at the beginning of December I no longer feel as though I'm stepping on egg-shells, and since we all reunited on Monday after their trip to St. Croix I've been thinking things are going to work out and I can even unpack.

Even Sweet Pea is getting more relaxed  and ventures out from his closet while Star Child is awake and does a belly to the ground slink into the bedroom where he sits and looks out the back window, doing an immediate belly to the ground slink back into his closet if she gets too close, but still--compared to December, when he wouldn't even come out till she had been safely in bed for half an hour, it's amazing.

With both the day's aspects perfecting within an hour of each other, at six and seven pm., by 6:30 I felt as though I'd burst if I didn't tell Ama how good it felt to be so comfortable and at home, so I did, and couldn't help myself from asking if she felt the same. She did.

Venus square Mars and More

I'm not sure if going to a regular folk's supermarket instead of to Whole Foods counts for this, but that's what happened, along with White Mummie coming back from the Caribbean with Two-Year-Old and all being well when they arrived.

TJ picked me and Sweet Pea up outside 1674 exactly on time at 10:00 am and we had a reasonably delay free drive up to Cambridge. One bad accident somewhere around Hartford that delayed us a bit but we were up here at two, and I asked TJ to take to me a supermarket for ordinary people instead of a Whole Foods, which is the closest supermarket to where I now live.

We went to a Shaw's and I got the makings I needed for the big fat curry I wanted to have waiting for when White Mummie and TYO arrived, and after Manhattan's pitiful little cheap supermarkets was a bit stunned by what was in stock at the Shaw's -- aisle after aisle of foreign foods, incredibly varied, if not organic. I ended up buying Marmite and Digestive biscuits along with all the curry makings, as well as some Dunkin' Donuts coffee instead of the $13.99 per pound offerings at Whole Foods.

I worked on the curry while TJ went and picked up the travelers from Logan, and by the time they came back everything was ready. Definitely a boring entry, but it's already four days ago and if I don't write this the day things happen, the details get lost.

Wednesday's Full Moon at 29 Cancer squared Venus for me exactly, and saw me sitting up in bed stuffing myself with McVitie's Digestive Biscuits while working on a copy-editing job about how to be a leader in business. Makes up for the lame Venus square Mars.

Mars Square Mercury Plus

So when I got the new computer I subscribed to Mobile Me in a somewhat pitiful attempt to help me keep myself organized (as though I were organized in the first place). I thought if I could for the first time really use the address book on the Air, instead of lugging a five by eight inch physical address book around with me from Silver to New York and now to Cambridge and back, when I booted up a desktop and Mobile Me'ed myself, the desktop computer's address book would automatically update. Brilliant!

Then I looked at what Mobile Me offered and went into a mild panic because it didn't say anything about linking a laptop to a desktop, just linking an iPhone or an iPod, neither of which I have, to one or the other. Mr. Mobile Me was very nice to me though and reassured me of course I could do it, so I did, and have yet to add anything to any address book anywhere, but I can't blame that on Mobile Me.

I can't blame re-transcribing an MP3 on Mobile Me, either, but I only spent three hours on it before the bell went off in my dim little brain and I realized I'd transcribed it two months ago, before I went up to Cambridge.

And to lump in a few highlights (!!!!!)  of the week as I'm finding it increasingly difficult to keep this up to date, Mercury trine Venus had me on Lands End's web site ordering two on sale funnel neck sweaters and a pair of silk long johns for my return to the Republic of Cambridge on Monday. I have no idea whatsoever what Mars trine Chiron did, unless it was me taking a deep breath over the copyediting job I have and realizing it doesn't have to be remotely perfect, it just has to make sense.

Mars square Venus this morning, and I was back at the Apple store on Broadway for the third Saturday in a row, this time at the Genius Bar having them reinstall iPhoto on the old PowerBook I'm sending to John, me being so generous and all, and then across the street at the diner wolfing down corned beef hash and eggs.

Tonight at 9:03 Jupiter opposes Chiron exactly. Perhaps its finally time to watch It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

Sun Opposed to Uranus

This was the first and probably the last time I hit the nail on the head with a prediction - that the White Mummie would return from Kathmandu with her beautiful new daughter. Bingo!

Mercury sextile Venus

I made a feeble attempt at posting for Sun opposed to Ascendant, back on November 17, and managed to write one paragraph about it was the day I got on Skype and talked to the white mummie in Kathmandu, but I never got as far as writing it was also the day I talked to a computer *expert* charged with digitizing a cassette tape for me so I could transcribe it from an MP3 and and almost lost it when he said he wouldn't send it to me via a file transfer program online, but would burn it to a CD so I could spend $$ and time going physically to pick it up - one of the very few times I have been able to stay consciously aware of a transit and been able to avoid conflict by saying "Okay, fine, you want to put it on a CD, put it on a CD and I'll come and pick it up"with only a mild note of hysteria and suppressed rage in my voice.

Mercury trine Venus, today, was much simpler: two hours before it perfected, I got an email from oneactplays.net informing me permission to perform had been granted to the Edward Alderton Theatre for one week next April, and would I like my $175 Canadian dollars via Paypal or my checking account? THAT'S the kind of straightforward manifestation we like.

Sun Opposed to Ascendant

Or conjunct the Descendant, as you prefer. This turned out to be the day I signed up for Skype so I could talk to the new mum on her travels half way around the world. At that point she had *only* reached Doha, in Qatar, where she had a twelve-hour layover before going on to Kathmandu, which (Kathmandu) was the real reason we'd decided Skype might be the only solution for communication. It worked perfectly from Doha, where as part of the travel arrangement she was put up in a hotel instead of having to spend half a day at the airport. Ten out of ten for Skype.

Sun conjunct Neptune square Saturn

Mr. Log helper came this morning and started to assemble the logs scattered around while I got out the hacksaw and went into the oak grove where I've been cutting lengths of rebar and cut some more so he could get going with the log retaining wall. When I'd done three I took them over to him and then went up the stone side steps to get to the house to change to short sleeves.

The flower beds I made by the side of the steps have been there about four years now, but this is the first year my *gardening* attempts are paying off, and I was stopped in my tracks (sorry) by - all of a sudden - how beautiful they looked. The dusty miller and vinca have been there all along, doing well because they're in some shade and don't have the relentless Land of Enchantment sun beating down on them all day, but today I saw cornflowers, larkspur, marigolds, daisies and a few unidentified wildflowers - blue, dark purple, yellow-orange, white, pink - all mixed up together in between the grey-green foliage and looking as though they had grown there naturally with no help from any human hand - just what I've been working towards for the past eight years.

The only word I can come up with is "transfixed", which is why I'm better at writing dialogue than prose, but I was; a few seconds of wonder and awe at nature's beauty and all that, and then I went and changed my shirt, cut some more rebar and took off in the car to the neighboring house where I can have all the lava rock I can pick up, returning with a big tub full to Mr. Log, who started to tell me could build me a beautiful small stone wall for not much money. Umm, lovely, not this year though, I said, can only do so much each time I'm out here. But maybe we can run a tab, he said, I'll do the work and you can pay me bit by bit. Umm, I said, let me think about it, and off he went, log wall built, while I immediately started weeding what will one day be a wildflower meadow but at the moment is so unlike one it's too daunting to even describe what it is.

Two phone calls interrupted me, both of them degenerating quickly into mutually held highly pessimistic views of the future. I'd intended to put down more weed-cloth and spread lava rock over it, but it got cold earlier than usual and I ended up knocking off at six and picking the last of the green tomatoes so I can pull the plants up tomorrow. How's that for a totally uninspired saturnine ending?

Mercury opposed to Mars...

...Sun conjunct Chiron and Mars trine Saturn - 11:00 am this morning to 10:00 pm tonight, almost as I'm writing this.

Mercury opposed to Mars was bad news for the businessman holding the Dish network franchise in Silver. I'd called him last week to say I'd lost satellite service on one of the TVs (ah, America!), and could he send a technician out as I'd exhausted all the trouble-shooting options offered. I got a long story about Dish charging $95 for a service visit and my records having been falsified by a previous franchise owner to give my address as 41, Village Road (instead of 14, Village road) because there had been a previous Dish client at this address and that was the only way they could continue to give me service, or something, all complete fabrication. (John had put service in his name only when we co-owned the house, and when I wanted to switch to my name after buying him out, the only way to do it was by closing his account and opening a completely new account in my name, which we did, using the correct address, 14 Village Road.)

Dish franchise man's solution to this totally made-up problem was to have me switch providers to DirectTV, the service John and I had had before we switched to Dish, presumably because he (franchise man) would then collect a commission for the switch. It would be much cheaper, he said, $30 a month less than what I'm paying for the similar service from Dish, and when could he come out to install the new equipment, of course all completely free of charge?

I had a house guest at the time, as well as being totally turned off by the lies Dish franchise man was telling me, and told him to call me back at a more convenient time. Blah blah blah, and this morning, with Mercury opposed to Mars, at the urging of a true friend, called Dish Network directly - or rather, had an online chat with someone representing Dish Network - and have a technician coming out tomorrow at the cost of $15 to check out why I can't get reception on TV #2.
Mr. Dish Franchise, after calling twice a day for the past few days, has become suddenly silent.

Sun conjunct Chiron: Somehow I was able to sit here and make corrections to an editing job I've been working on for literally months and send them back to the client and then - Mars trine Saturn - with a clear conscience I got myself into the *garden* and continued the let's-make-at-least-one-half-acre-of-this-property-look-cared-for project. In true Mars (iron) fashion, I went back to cutting rebar with the hacksaw lent me by a friend, and thanks to last night's rain was able to whack the rebar into the wet earth hard enough to hold back the logs I'm trying to do erosion control with. I was also able to hold in place the corrugated iron I dragged up from the barn yesterday, which I hope will give me yet another terrace on the triangle I'm trying to landscape. As for the weeding, there's only one way to do it - do it, duh - and once again last night's downpour helped. It's all a long way from the Upper East Side.

Mars opposed to Mercury

With optimism bordering on idiocy, I took one half-read New Yorker, one un-read same, an almost finished copy of Three Men in a Boat, an unopened copy of The Daughter of Time and two letters (you know, those sheets of paper covered in ink marks that come in oblong-shaped paper sleeve things with more ink marks and a little square picture in the top right-hand corner) I have been *supposed* to answer since Christmas up to Santa Fe with me for a less than 48-hour stay. By the time I left, I'd read nothing but half a page of the already started New Yorker, but did manage to write and mail a four-page response to one of the letters, marveling all the time at the wonders of astrology.

I was a little alarmed at the thought of starting the drive back to Silver with Mars coming to oppose Mercury at the end of the five-hour trip, but the first part of the journey went so well - L in the lead in the nondescript rental with Mabel, the pug puppy, me following in the Volvo with Finn the standard poodle, keeping L in my sights all the way and following her off the 25 onto the exit for Socorro, meeting in the plaza for coffee and dog runs - my vague thought about paying more attention to what kind of car the rental was went out of my head completely as our little convoy set off towards the highway again, with plans to go over the Black Range to get home.

L was in the lead as I'd told her the Volvo started doing 90 on the highway with no conscious help (or hindrance) from me, and she wasn't sure the rental was up to that. As it turned out it obviously was, and she sped off into the distance with me and Finn in hot pursuit, pardon these truly terrible cliches as here comes another one - imagine my surprise when the exit for Hillsboro and the Black Range appeared and L kept on speeding right past it.

OK, I thought, something's come up and we're going the longer and more boring Hatch to Deming way, and savoring the irony of me being the only one with the cell phone I fell in behind her again. Imagine my even greater surprise when she sped past the Hatch exit as well, heading straight for Las Cruces, which set off a bit more of an alarm bell for me. She must be sick, I thought, or Mabel has been taken ill and we are off to the hospital or vet in Cruces, although I thought it more than passing strange that she didn't pull over, as we'd arranged in case of an emergency, to tell me exactly what happened.

Instead, I pulled over and put on my hazard lights, which the car I was following ignored completely a) because as I found out when I read the manual and pulled out again, what I had actually switched on was my rear-window defroster, and b), because the car I thought contained L did not contain her at all, as every astute reader has by now figured out, but which dawned on me only as I followed it onto the "Hospital" exit - honest - and then to a Bank of America ATM at which point two elderly Hispanic women got out.

At that point there was nothing to do but dredge up every memory I have of Cruces, find my way to the 10 and give the Volvo its head to get me to the kennel in Silver in time to board Finn, who had been asleep in the back throughout all this, lifting his head briefly when I pulled over and defrosted the rear window. I pulled into their driveway at 5:55 pm, just as they were about to close. Time of perfection of Mars opposed to Mercury: 5:56 pm. Two more cliches: All's Well that ends Well and You Had to have Been There.

Venus opposed to Mercury

In the car to play tennis at eight, back in the car for coffee with tennis partner, walk to thrift shop, buy two hand puppets for great-nieces and aqua linen and rayon tunic sweater thing for self, total $5, walk around greenmarket, have animated conversation with wine maker from the Mimbres, back in the car to go to another thrift shop, buy slotted serving spoon for $1, back in the car to go to Habitat's Restore, buy small aluminum bucket thing for $1, home and unload.

Eat lunch, collect plastic plant buckets and go with friend to deliver to person selling plants for good cause, decide on spur of moment to go the Gem Show at the old Walmart. Admission free, much oohing and ahhing, many beautiful things if you like that kind of stuff, tempted by five inch green sphere with black rings that reminded self of Saturn but upon discovery of price of $35 found it easy to resist, back home.

Water plants, take shower, wear (washed) aqua tunic top and skirt and go in car to barbecue, eat, drink, talk, drive home, fall in heap, wonder if I am starting to live here.

Sun Opposed to Mars

This perfected at 8:23 am but hung around till noon, by which time I'd been to the dump with many, many bags o'trash, taken library books back that were a month overdue but as this is Silver there's no fine, gone to Walmart and done shopping for the weekend and stopped by the house where I can take all the lava rock I can pick up for nothing but the cost of carting it away and carted away yet another big bucketful.

Things ground to a halt after that, but with Mercury square Uranus later in the day, I went to AmericanMeadows and ordered yet another couple of pounds of wildflower seeds for what might with any luck and a great deal of blood, sweat and tears be a wildflower meadow one day, especially now I know deer-resistant wildflowers are one woman's deer-resistant wildflowers, one woman's weeds.

Mercury opposed to Mars

So the last time I managed to post on here was when Mercury stationed retrograde on natal Jupiter, and here it is only two weeks later and with Mercury R opposed to Mars in six hours time here I am again, to put down what happened yesterday when Venus squared the Midheaven.
First thing in the morning I got an email from a woman I know casually but would like to know better asking if I wanted to play tennis, and 30 minutes later I met her on the university courts. After beating me 6-0 - no surprise at all - she asked if I would be interested in meeting the woman who helps her clean her house and perhaps hiring her for a few hours a month in the future. As I've just been paid for feeding a friend's cats while she was away, and as Lindy works for $10 an hour, exploitation anywhere but here, I think, I agreed, and tennis friend brought Lindy up to the house to introduce us later in the afternoon. We agreed she'll come and help me clean and get the house ready for potential tenants in two weeks time - four hours for $40 - and with my cat money I can repeat the performance if I am lazy enough.
Then there was a brief phone talk with a female client I'm editing a document for and never using prepositions to end a sentence with, and finally at night a friend from New York who now lives in Portland called to say she was going to be in New York at the end of October and hoped I would be too. If the potential tenants materialize, I shall be.

Venus to the Sun...

...and the first really warm day, so I go charging off to one of the few stores here where I can find clothing that looks like me when I put it on for a *reasonable* price. For the past eight years I've bought almost nothing except t-shirts from Gospel Mission in Silver for 25 cents each, so with my 65th (!!!!!) birthday fast approaching I decided I could spend some money after my winter of living like the church mouse.

I found a beautiful charcoal colored top, much fancier than anything I normally wear, and an unstructured cream colored very lightweight linen coat/jacket thing that I wasn't sure about but bought anyway, figuring I could take it back within ten days if I changed my mind, and felt only slightly sick as I handed over my charge card.

Going from the sublime to the ridiculous, I brought both pieces home and then took off to the local thrift shop here where I had a $25 credit and bought two pairs of lightweight stretch pants. Home again, I took out the sewing machine  and began to tailor both pairs to fit me, as they were both one size too big. I'd almost finished the first pair before the transit passed, and am curious to see when the sewing machine comes out again. Considering the state of my bank balance, I'm hoping it will be soon.

Venus opposed to Pluto, then trine Uranus

This turned out to be the day to paint the shelves in the computer room and kitchen. I bought the paint weeks ago after the Keystone Cops installed the french doors by nailing up two by fours to make the door frame smaller, and had slapped a coat of paint on the unfinished wood soon after they'd finished the work (didn't mark aspects - slipping), but that was as far as I got.

I haven't paid much attention to this apartment for years and it's starting to show. (I did paint the living room magenta when Uranus conjuncted Mars, but that was three years ago.) I have a once-white particle board computer station that I bought at Conran's, which dates it right there, and that was looking particularly dingy. It now looks spanking fresh, even if you can see a few brush marks, and I rack up further evidence that my twelfth house Venus in Aries is much happier slapping semi-gloss white paint around than involving herself in messy relationships with earthlings.

Further evidence of the non-sexual nature of that Venus appeared two days later as she trined Uranus and brought me my first copy of The New Yorker since November 26 (I'm aware of the date as I had to find it to email their subscription service and complain); the generic Celexa I ordered from a Canadian pharmacy three weeks ago, rather than have my 78-year-old neighbor in Silver go to Walmart for me and mail it here; a serious inquiry about the 1957 Chevy truck I've listed on Craigslist for said neighbor, and, as far as I know, the first comment left on this blog by someone I haven't told to read it (and none of them do anyway) saying that he or she enjoys it and thanking me for writing it, bringing the grand total of readers even closer to a two-digit number. Many thanks to whoever that was from me and my twelfth house on the upper east side. 

Venus Sextile Mars

Talk about a balance in my life between self-assertion and the need to relate to others: with this aspect perfecting at 5:00 am this morning, a great deal of yesterday was spent on the phone and/or online attempting to coordinate three of my friends so all four of us could go to the same movie at the same time in the same location - two Upper-East-Siders, one Hell's Kitchener and one Washington Heightser, each, of course, with her own ideas on whether the film would be sold out or not, whether buying tickets online and paying the surcharge is worth it or a waste of money, how soon we should get to the theater to buy the tickets if we decide to go that route, whether the window person would sell me senior tickets without the other seniors being there, how soon we should go back to the theater to start to wait in line in case there are crowds, whether we should eat before or after, whether we shouldn't eat at all but just have a cup of tea - a truly astonishing set of differing opinions, although maybe not too astonishing as we're all women of a certain age who have been living alone for close to a century, if you add all the years up, which makes it even more of a miracle that it all seems to have worked itself out.

God willing, Deo Volente and all that, in less than 30 minutes the four of us will start assembling in the Barnes & Noble on 86th Street, with or without tickets, with or without food (or knots) in our stomachs, and 30 minutes after that, assuming we all find each other ha ha, be making our way to Loews on 86th and Third for the 4 o'clock showing of Up in the Air.

With this kind of start to the new year, anything is possible, even surviving Pluto opposed to Saturn square Neptune, with Saturn squaring itself and sitting on Neptune at the same time.

Venus trine Mercury

Once again proving that Venus in my chart has more to do with art and moolah than love, I got an email from an amateur theatre group in London asking for information about Soldiering On, the better of my two 9/11 plays. No guarantee that the play will actually be performed, but a request for a copy with a promise to pay all performance rights should the artistic director decide to go ahead. This would mean a grand total of $175 for me (in late 2011, but who's complaining?) if SO were performed for seven nights, which seems to be normal run time for the theatre. Loverly jubbly all around.

There was a response to the ad I have posted on Craigslist Albuquerque for the sale of a Silver City neighbor's 1957 Chevvy Apache truck. As it comes from someone whose email address is sparkyclassicmotors, it's more likely to be a solicitation for the truck to be listed on his site than an offer to buy, but it's something.

(The only other response to the ad was two weeks ago when Venus opposed Uranus, and when the potential buyer proved to be willing to spend only half of the asking price, that was over before it began, in true Uranian fashion.)

Just to add a little bit of friendship and affection to the Venus/Mercury trine, said neighbor in Silver called to say thank you for the Stilton cheese I sent him a week ago priority mail and have been concerned about ever since. It arrived on Saturday in perfect condition, removing all worries on my part about going to jail for saying no when the post office counter person asked me if there was anything perishable in the package, and he had been happily eating it for the past two days instead of it sitting in the Silver City Post Office emitting powerful malodorous rays of rotting blue cheese.

This aspect doesn't perfect for another eight hours, so should Mick Jagger call to invite me to Mustique for the holidays, you will read about it first here.

Mars trine the Sun

Whenever this happens for me when Mars is in Leo it morphs almost immediately into Mars opposed to the Moon, and it's not easy to sort when one ends and the other kicks in. The Mars trining the Sun came at the end of the full moon on Uranus with me picking up Mr. Patches at the shelter and friend X going off to stay with her sister, and as the opposition to the Moon began, I had the Keystone Cops disguised as handymen here putting up French doors for me.

When I moved into this apartment 35 (!) years ago there were a set of French doors dividing the front room from the room next to it, but when I took all the other doors off to make the railroad flat airier, the French doors came off as well. Last year the illegal sublet above me was asked to move by the landlord as he wanted the apartment for his son, and I asked illegal sublet if I could have the French doors from that apartment. He took them off for me, brought them downstairs, and ever since they've been attractively propped up against a wall in the living room. When my friend upstairs moved down to St. Croix permanently last month, a friend of hers referred a supposed gem of a handyman to cart away all the stuff from the apartment that wasn't being shipped, sold or given away. He did indeed cart away the refrigerator, two huge couches that no one else wanted to get down three flights of stairs and assorted other flotsam and jetsam. She had bookcases attached to the wall which I decided I wanted, and somehow Mr. Gem let it be known that he could detach them from the wall for me, put them up down here and also do any other odd jobs I needed doing that I'm not capable of doing myself, and would charge only $25 an hour for his services.

A deal was struck, and as Mars began to oppose the Moon along he came, complete with helper, to put on the doors and hang a big mirror that had needed hanging for about three years, since I managed to get it off the wall myself when I painted the bedroom. I made a cave retreat for Sweet Pea by hanging a blanket over the upturned bed platform, new poor old sick cat stayed where he was, wheezing and sneezing behind a filing cabinet, and I retreated to the computer to catch up on The Silver City Sun-News and the Daily Mail.

Then began a great discussion between the Gems on how exactly to hang the doors, which quickly became and remained heated as they realized not only were the doors mis-matched but there's a slope of about ten degrees to the floor of the building. Quite why Gem hadn't noticed this when he came earlier in the week to suss out the job I'm not sure, but there is a lumber yard quite close by and soon what looked to me like two-by-fours were being nailed all over the inside of the frame of the doorway, accompanied by constant and loud instructions from Gem and non-constructive and louder criticism and carping from his helper. Fine carpentry we are not talking, neither are we talking any kind of model for employer/employee relations.

Even the two-by-fours didn't do the job because once the doors were hung there was still a one inch gap in between them and another one inch gap to the floor in the middle of the doorway, which Gem assured me could be fixed by a piece of molding that he would bring the next day. I was so horrified to hear that they would actually be coming back the next day I agreed that this would be a wonderful solution, and asked if they could please hang the mirror before they left so I could put the bed back in place.

Nothing if not willing, they began to put the mirror back into its frame and I returned to the computer, where I was catching up on Victoria Beckham's latest footwear when there was a loud crack from the front of the apartment, followed by dead silence and then muted hissings and whisperings. I knew what had happened before Gem appeared in the doorway, extremely apologetic and embarrassed. Promising to return the next morning with the molding for the doorway and a new mirror, the two of them left their tools behind and slunk out of the apartment, and as this is already far too long a post and has turned itself into Mars opposed to the Moon, it shall be continued under that heading.

Sun trine Pluto

I really like pasta (there IS a point to this) but never make it because of the cooking time, gallons of water, mess, and a natal north node in Cancer. I've seen those glass tube cooking things advertised on late night TV where you put the pasta in, pour boiling water on top and screw on a lid for ten minutes or so, but have never been tempted to buy (natal Saturn in the Second).

Imagine my delighted surprise (!) when I fell across an article in the Times last week describing a way to cook pasta by sauteeing it like a risotto, slowly adding water or stock until all the liquid is absorbed and the spaghetti/macaroni/linguine/whatever is all plumped up and cooked. No bringing massive quantities of water of water to a boil, no boiling over of starchy water messing up the stove, no trying to pick up great big pots of boiling water when you only have one oven mitt, no splashing boiling water over yourself when you try to drain the pasta in a colander - just easily cooked pasta as al dente as you would like because you can test it as you go along. Admittedly, you have to stand there at the stove and stir it every now and again, but I've never been one not to be willing to make sacrifices for a good cause.

And what better day to attempt the method for the first time than when my creative self was in perfect harmony with the transformative powers of the Universe, your friend and mine, Pluto the Dwarf Planet?  I was pushing a grocery cart aimlessly around Gristede's an hour before the aspect perfected wondering what to have for dinner when I remembered the Times article, and five minutes later I was swiping my card at the checkout counter for a packet of linguine, a bottle of clam juice and a jar of Progresso White Clam Sauce.

Five minutes after that I was standing at the stove in the kitchen breaking strands of linguine into three pieces and dropping them into a sizzling mixture of butter and olive oil in a heavy-bottomed Le Creuset pot. I went from the essence of the article, so to speak, and made most of it up as I went along. If I had followed the recipe I probably wouldn't have had brown crispy bits of linguine, but they turned out in the end to be quite tasty once they'd absorbed all the clam juice diluted with an equal amount of water. In 15 minutes I had a big fat pot of linguine and clam sauce and 10 minutes after that I'd eaten most of it. Thank you, Dwarf Planet. I have to go watch 'House' now.

Mercury trine Pluto

Is this what's gotten me to post here again after weeks? Who knows? I think it definitely got me to learn how to do a hanging indent in Word to comply with a transcribing client's wishes, not that it was too difficult. All you have to do, if you have natal Jupiter in Virgo at the end of 5 ha ha, is go to the Help menu
of whatever program you need help with and type in your question.

As when I transcribe I use macros, which take you out of MS Word and put you in some nightmarish programming place I can't even remember the name of, I didn't hold out much hope when I went to ask about hanging indents. (Was this Sun sextile Chiron, exact today as well?) To my grudging admiration, Mr. Gates came through - not only with a graphic representation of the kinds of indents possible, but with easy-to-understand instructions that let me create exactly the format my client needed. (Oh, how I love to say "my client" after three months without work. Is THAT Sun sextile Chiron?)

Who knows? Who knows anything? Please contact if you do.