Cancer Lunar Eclipse Trine Natal Mars...

...with, of course, the Sun sextile natal Mars: end of the year, end of the decade and even though I've been telling myself for a month that I'd wait till January 3, 2010, when I'll be in a new billing statement on my credit card,  I was online two hours before the eclipse adding more air miles to my total and buying Io Edition, an astrology program I've been lusting after for years, ever since Apple switched to OS X  and my pirated version of Io for System 9 no longer worked.

It does one thing I used to love that no other program for the Mac does, which is print out a dated list of transits for whatever period you give it;  I always used to do it January 1 to December 31 of the coming year, which is exactly what I did as soon as Edition was downloaded and installed. This way I can look at one piece of paper and see just when Saturn is going to square natal Saturn and conjunct natal Neptune, and also when the dreaded Pluto opposed to Saturn square Neptune will occur. Knowledge is power, ha ha, and all that.

So at 11:37 on New Year's Eve I'm not going to write about how appropriate it was that when Mars retrograde opposed natal Moon earlier in the week I was painting the two by fours the Keystone Cops used to frame the archway for the French doors they installed at the first opposition, or that with Mercury square the Sun early tomorrow I spent all day today that I wasn't playing with Io sending electronic New Year Cards to all the people I didn't send Christmas cards to - everyone I know, that is.

There was a partial lunar eclipse close to the degree of today's on December 30, 2001. That was a couple of days after I'd been told by my supervisor to take time off work because of poor performance after 9/11. Since then I've fought with two insurance companies for a settlement, bought a house in New Mexico with a friend, bought him out four years later, had several plays published and one produced, started playing tennis and line dancing and am on my third cat. In a nutshell, that is.

Okay. It must be midnight. The fireworks are going off outside. Happy New Decade.

Sun Opposed to Saturn Square Neptune

This is standard Christmas day for me (natal Saturn at 4 Cancer and Neptune at 4 Libra) but you can get used to anything ha ha, and it's been a long time since this influence made itself felt to me on December 25th.

Why was this Christmas different from all other Christmases? Because the Venerable Mr. Patches bit me again - this time on Christmas Eve, on the back of my left hand, just as my right hand was becoming useable again, and again on my upper arm, sinking his teeth in deep for that one and leaving me with a three inch by two inch bruise. The back of my hand swelled so much all my veins disappeared, but I was  four days into a course of penicillin and today, 12/27, the swelling's gone down and I can open a can and take the top off a bottle of milk and all kinds of other miraculous things.

What was bothering me on Christmas Day was thinking that I was turning Mr. Patches into a biter - not that I was literally, but that Sweet Pea was by wanting to play with him. As Sweet Pea's idea of playing is to launch himself a foot or so into the air and land with all four paws on whatever he's playing with, it's very easy for the played-with-one to misinterpret the gesture and think it's all out war. As Sweet Pea is always the aggressor, every little skirmish not surprisingly leaves Mr. Patches that much more agitated and upset, and it was right after one of their scuffles that I got bit. Troubling, to put it mildly.

Spending Christmas Day with a woman who runs a dog rescue didn't help, as the issue to her was cut and dried. Dog bites foster parent, dog gets euthanized, therefore if cat bites.... you can see where that one went very quickly. Very troubling, to think that having Sweet Pea as a roommate was turning a gentle old cat into a vicious biter who would have to go back to the shelter where he was rescued from death row, when all I wanted to do was give Sweet Pea someone to play with. Happy Christmas indeed.

Cat Bites Woman, Woman Blackens Eye

Quite what the astrology behind this doozie is I don't know, unless it's Mars (male cat) stationed retrograde against natal Moon (Me? But that would be the Sun. ) All I know is it happened on Friday night when I was chasing Big Old Mr. Patches around the apartment trying to give him the last of his week's worth of medication, most of which had ended up on the floor or on me rather than inside him anyway.

He has to sense that I'm unsure of myself, which is putting it mildly, when I'm trying to stick the syringe into the corner of his mouth--he's twice the size of Sweet Pea--and as I was bent double scurrying around the apartment after him holding him half by his collar and half by the scruff of his neck he turned his head and bit me, hard, on the right index finger, causing me to yelp, let go of him immediately and stumble into a doorknob on the newly installed French doors.

My finger hurt so much I wasn't even aware of the black eye till the next morning, when I looked in the mirror while attempting to clean my teeth with my left hand. (Well, with a toothbrush held in my left hand.) The bitten finger was red and swollen, as was my palm between the finger and thumb, and wouldn't straighten like the other nine, but I gallantly (stupidly?) took myself off to rehearsal for the big holiday pageant at the senior center, came straight home and went back to bed, trying to find a comfortable position for my right hand.

If I had what's called a primary care doctor I'd have called first thing on Saturday morning, but me and other forty million uninsured people in this country tend to wait a couple of days on the off-chance whatever it is will go away. By Sunday it was clear even to me that I was now the one needing medication and did what I always do in extremis--called the mother of the child I came here to babysit for 46 years ago, who's an M.D.

When I got her answering machine I resorted to the web and discovered Duane-Reade have walk-in clinics now with doctors on staff. I called back to tell Dr. G not to bother to call me back just as she was looking up my phone number, told her I'd report when back home and took myself off to Duane-Reade on 86th Street, clutching my $10 off coupon that I found online and feeling only slightly pitiful.

The sign there said the clinic was no longer open on Sundays and the nearest doctor-equipped D-R was at 50th and Broadway, and glossing over the details, which were remarkably pleasant, all things considered, by 3:30 pm I was home with my prescription for heavy-duty penicillin which Dr. G confirmed was exactly what she would have prescribed.

On Monday morning, two pills down but still feeling terrible, I took myself off again for rehearsal for the pageant, hoping someone would tell me to go home once I told my tale of woe, but when I finished, the 80-plus-years-old choreographer promptly told me her nephew had died over the weekend. Competition was not mentioned, but no way did my black eye and a swollen finger trump that. The show must go on, and did, at one o'clock, to great applause and appreciation from the audience, and once again I returned home and went to bed.

Today, Tuesday, the penicillin is definitely taking hold. I'm able to type with capital letters, my index finger is the same color as all the others and I can almost straighten it, sausage-like though it still is. Mr. Patches continues to be the big old sweet thing he is when he's not having a syringe poked into his mouth and curls up in bed with me every night, while Sweet Pea does his usual Indian Fakir impression and sleeps on the cold linoleum kitchen floor with his head resting comfortably on the wooden pedestal base of the table.

Is it possible that Mars has been stationed retrograde for a week square Mr. Patches' natal Saturn, with me annoying the hell out of him by attempting to give him medication? Now there's a mystery that will never be revealed, and what's $150 and a black eye every now and again anyway? Time for another pill.

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.

Neptune Square Ascendant

Is this why I decided it would be a really good idea to foster a cat while I'm here in the city, so Sweet Pea would have someone to play with? If there's anything I don't like about being here it's because he seems to be so unhappy and bored. After being used to being let out at daylight to go and roam on his own six acres and wherever else he has the courage to go and coming in, if he feels like it, at dusk when it's time for some wet food, I imagine him feeling so confined and miserable while he's here I can hardly stand it, me being the soft-hearted dope I am.

I play marbles with him and run backwards and forwards dragging toys, but his response is very half-hearted. He sleeps most of the day, which is probably exactly what he does outside in New Mexico, but I don't see it then, and here, all I can think is how lethargic and dull he's getting.

It seemed like the perfect solution then, to foster a cat until it found a permanent home and give Sweet Pea someone to play with. What I didn't realize was that when you agree to foster, you basically get who-ever's up next on death row in a city shelter, which is how I ended up going up to 116th Street on the full Moon to get Mr. Patches. (His shelter name was Kitty, but as he weights nineteen and a half pounds that didn't seem appropriate and because of his coloring I immediately re-christened him Mr. Patches - The Venerable Mr. Patches, to be exact, on account of his advanced age (ten) and his general air of stateliness.)

He was supposed to be in perfect health which didn't make any sense at all as they gave me a vial of antibiotics for him when I picked him up. He had what looked like a cold sore on his nose and also had a terrible wheezing cough, and the short version is he went into animal hospital on December 8th and I got him out again, cold sore and cough-free, on Saturday the 12th.

Since then, he and Sweet Pea have been - and still are - working out some kind of uneasy truce. When Mr. Patches was sick he hid out in any cubbyhole he could find for himself, and there was not much Sweet Pea could do. Now Mr. Patches is feeling so much better he sleeps all day - as does Sweet Pea, alas - but then in the evening and at night begins to prowl around the apartment, followed now by Sweet Pea who would very much like to play. Unfortunately, and I know this because I saw it last year when I rented the addition in Silver to someone with a cat, SP's idea of playing is to launch himself 18 inches straight into the air and land, four legs extended, on whoever he thinks he's playing with. Mr. Patches is yet to be convinced that this is anything but war.

The vet tells me that the two of them will work it out eventually, so at night I doze fretfully listening to yelps and yips and meows and murmurs, sweep up all the tufts of hair in the morning and hope for peace in our time, or at least before Neptune stops squaring my Ascendant next year.

Mars Opposed to Moon II

Well, the Fawlty Towers O'Reilly builders, as my sister called them, did come back the next day and they did bring a new mirror. They also brought a piece of molding for the French doors, which they nailed (!) on with most of it on the door itself and very little of it sticking out beyond the door to mask the one inch gap, so there's still light coming through a three-quarters of an inch space between the doors: they hung the mirror without breaking it again, didn't put on the support screws they told me they would,  and without being asked, reinforced the platform the mattress sits on so that the cabinet I have sideways underneath it no longer opens, but I was so eager to get them out the door I didn't even notice this until I'd paid a bill twice more than I thought it would be and said lovely, thanks, couldn't be happier, please go away and never come back.

Since then I've begun to turn out every closet and cupboard and closet in this apartment, dragged into the apartment two of the bookcases Mr. Gem brought down to my floor, dragged down to the trash for throw-out night two of the bookcases I couldn't use and begun to throw out everything in this apartment I haven't used for a year - most of it.

But the day Mars opposed natal Moon exactly (and 24 hours before the Sun squared Jupiter) was the day I finally plucked up energy/courage/was motivated enough whatever you want to call it and was able to take myself off to the senior center five blocks from my apartment for line dancing, something I've been saying I "want" to do since I got back almost three months ago.

And of course I walked right into the middle of a rehearsal for the Holiday Show, was promptly corralled as a member of the chorus, and Frank, head of the drama group I went to last winter when I was here, pounced on me to tell me it had to be Kismet because another of his drama groups downtown was doing a reading of one of my short plays, That Is What I Did, that afternoon. (This was scheduled to happen while I was here last year, but with apologies to Dave Barry who always likes to say that he is not making things up, one of the actors at that time in the three-character play got pneumonia, one of them died and the other one went to the funeral.)

So, with Mars opposed to natal Moon, I took myself off after rehearsal (involving many assorted women in a low-income housing project - natal Moon in Aquarius) to another senior center downtown and watched a truly credible performance of my seven-page play, which got a great reception and much laughter, just as I would have hoped.

So now, with Mars going retrograde on the 20th of December, I intend to take special notice of the days when Mars opposes the Moon again - December 30th for this year - and see if there is any correlation between what happens on that date and what happened on the tenth.

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.

Full Moon on Uranus Square Mars

Events setting this up began on Sunday night right after I'd eaten my bowl of transformational spaghetti when a friend called to see if she could spend the night. She'd had her apartment fumigated the day before and was having a severe allergic reaction to the pesticide. She was calling from the street, having just come from the emergency room, and when she arrived at my apartment her body was covered in angry red welts with her face completely swollen. I made her up a bed on the couch and all was well.

On Monday she went back to her apartment, I  did a couple of errands and came home to a frantic message on the machine saying her dog was very sick and needed to get to a vet. How it came up I'm not quite sure, but I agreed the charges could go on my credit card as she doesn't have one, and when she went to the emergency animal medical center the dog was admitted to intensive care and $2,000 was charged to my account. Friend X spent the night again (and I'm being fully reimbursed).

Tuesday, with the full moon due to perfect just after midnight, X went off to the clinic to check on her dog and I went to the midday session at the studio. I came back to the apartment - X and I were going to go to the Playwrights/Directors workshop together at five - but there was no one here.  I called the clinic to see if she was still there and was told the dog had been euthanized and X had left. She got here just as I was leaving for the studio and was in far better shape than I was when my cat ran away last year. We had plans to go to a play reading that evening and I was sure she would cancel. She didn't come to the studio with me for the workshop but we met afterwards at the play reading, where she put on an amazing front and didn't tell the playwright, a friend of hers, what had happened. As she said to me, it was the playwright's evening and she didn't want to spoil it.

We walked home from the bus under a blazing full moon and this time the message on the machine was about a cat - I had volunteered to foster one thinking it would be a companion for my poor Sweet Pea, languishing away from boredom in an apartment when he's used to being outdoors all day in New Mexico. The rescue agency had found me one and I could pick him up the next day, which I did at 7 p.m., exactly an hour after the Sun squared natal Mars. What baffles me is the animal involvement, but as always I'm sure more will be revealed.

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.

Jupiter to the Moon

November seventh? That's when I last posted here? Obviously there is a vast right-wing conspiracy preventing me from posting every day as I (think I) would like, but I shall soldier on regardless and document the manifestation in my life of the subject transit.

Having the ceiling fall in on your computer and chair you sit in while at the computer is not one of the first things that comes to mind when I think of Jupiter to the Moon. I thought that perhaps the transit would bring the next chapter in the saga of the stripping of the shutters, as three years ago, when Jupiter squared the Moon, I took it upon myself to begin the horrendous task of stripping the wooden shutters in this apartment down to the bare wood. I did as much as can be expected from an Aries - a half-assed job of getting a lot, but nowhere near all, of the paint off - taking the shutters off  their hinges but never putting them back on, that kind of thing - but my predictive powers proved as accurate as always and nothing involving shutters has happened, only the ceiling falling on the computer and chair.  Moon is easy - it happened at home - and not actually being in the chair when it happened is probably the Jupiter part. (With natal Jupiter in Virgo, I'd just taken the cobbled-together pages of a play I'd worked on the night before into  the living room to spread out on the table there when it happened.)

Another home-/moon-based event -  a friend who's lived in this building for 30 years giving up her apartment  and moving out of state - is probably more related to "my" upcoming Pluto/Saturn opposition I've been eyeing with trepidation for years than to a Jupiter to the Moon manifestation, in spite of her leaving me with a lot  of stuff.

"If" Saturn/Pluto means structure you've taken for granted in your life  passing away,  her moving leaves me with the distinction of being the only tenant in the building until the landlord's son (AKA The Young Massa) moves into the apartment on top of me which is being totally refigured and renovated for him, hence the ceiling falling down on top of my computer.

It's all very a butterfly flaps its wings in a rain forest and a train goes off the tracks in New Jersey, but the good news is my landlord buys me a new iMac without blinking an eye as he's aware enough to know he could be paying for coma woman in Lenox Hill for the next 10 years. Don't have his data.

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Larger Natal Chart

I have absolutely no idea how this happened and have only just discovered it's here. I've been trying for months to have this image appear whenever anyone (I should be so lucky) clicked on "See full-size image" on my profile page. All you ever get when you do that is see another ridiculously small image of my natal chart, which tells you absolutely nothing. So somehow, in my poking around in Blogger Help, I must have come up with something that resulted in a link to this bigger image. So all I have to do now ha ha is figure out how I get this to show up when someone clicks on "See full-size image," instead of it being here as a regular posting, not that I do regular postings, ha ha.

Venus Opposed to Venus

Venus is ruled by Taurus, which rules stuff, and I am overwhelmed with stuff today.

My upstairs neighbor, someone I've known since 1963 (!), is moving out and emptying her apartment. A lot of the furniture has takers, including me. I get a beautiful skinny console table on castors, designed to pull up over a bed so the occupant can work from between the sheets. I won't be using it that way, but it's perfect for going long side against a wall in a railroad flat. I've been putting what doesn't have a home to go to on Craigslist. This morning we took three big bags of clothes to a thrift shop, came home and went through the pile of kitchenware, books, office equipment, clothes, shoes, handbags, sheets, towels and bed-linens etc. that she's been sorting out.

So far today I have magazine holders, a big Ali Baba-looking wicker basket with a lid that the cat is terrified of, plastic storage boxes, a brand new Ralph Lauren white cotton over-sized sweater, five astonishingly beautiful enamel cooking pots from France, three just as beautiful decorative French molds for making mousse (one shaped like a lobster, two like a fish, which of course I shall be making full use of when I give my smart dinner parties over the winter), twenty sheets of high quality construction paper in a roll and a bottle of Vitabath, and it's not yet half-past two.

Sun opposed to Mercury, Mercury opposed to Sun

First one was Monday, when I tried the printer one more time with no success and then attempted to set up a live chat with a Hewlett Packard technician. "We're sorry", said the message, "We do not provide live support for Macintosh. Please email your question using the form provided and we will get back to you, usually within one business day." I emailed.

Tuesday, with Mercury now opposed to the Sun, when by noon I had had no response to my email I called HP tech support. After holding for probably 15 minutes, a real live person began to speak, and as they couldn't find the email I'd sent the day before, I repeated the problem I was having. (This is a week ago that I'm writing about now, and I've completely lost interest in it. Main point is I spent most of Tuesday talking to tech support, manually deleting files, putting them back, starting and restarting, downloading more software, reinstalling more software etc. etc. etc., and always, whenever I sent something to print as a test, it did exactly as it had been doing on Sunday - never printing but always showing up on the "completed" side as having done so.)

There's no horror stories here about bad tech support. They always called me back when they said they would while I was performing yet another test - but we got nowhere on Tuesday and I had to leave the house at 4:30.

By Wednesday morning the aspect had passed, and the support guy who called was the first to suggest that maybe it was the ink cartridge, which of course is what it turned out to be choke pass the razor blade. Yet another reason not to live in two places and leave cartridges in printers to dry out for months. By rights, he *should* have been a woman, as the afternoon's aspect was Mercury trine the Moon, but who's complaining?

Mercury square the Nodes

Spent four hours this afternoon trying to get the printer to do what it's supposed to do - print - with no success whatsoever. Every time I tried, the job I needed printing went straight to the completed side of the printer box and showed up, complete with current time, as having printed, but nothing ever showed up in the print queue. 

A couple of times I got the blue and white barber pole indicating that the job was being sent, but the pole just went on turning and nothing happened. I re-installed the printer software, uninstalled the printer software, downloaded and installed new printer software, unplugged the printer, unplugged the computer, booted off and on in every order I could think of - nothing. 

Eventually, long after I *should* have given up, I did, and didn't even try tech support but decided to do it bright and early Monday.

Mars square Venus II

So Boy in the Balloon never left the ground and we rounded out the evening, thanks to Netflix, watching "Mon Oncle", a half-century-old (!) classic French film I've never seen and have always wanted to, which came through with flying colors in the Mars square Venus Department of Manifestation - or at least I think so.

Mars, in the world according to me, was the *modern* appliances that constantly beeped, buzzed and clanked in the 1950's machine-for-living house that was a fifth major character in the movie, along with plastics-manufacturing husband, neatness-obsessed wife, unhappy little boy and bumbling brother of wife, the "oncle" of the title, despised by his business-obsessed brother-in-law yet envied by same for the mutual love and admiration between uncle and nephew.

Venus, pour moi (it IS a French movie), was the amazing supposed-to-be (and was) hilarious mid-20th century furniture, any one piece of which would fetch thousands of dollars at auction today, and also the overall sweetness of the film, which of course ends with loving reconciliation of father and son, brought about by bumbling oncle.

A bit of a stretch? Dunno. Works for me. And just for the record, I'm writing this with Mercury trine Uranus exact, and I'm pretty sure it's the first time I've posted to this blog in daylight.

Mars Square Venus

This doesn't perfect till 9:42 tonight, another four hours, but as Mars square Mercury last week sent Dan the Vocal Man into my life, offering me and the cat a ride to Boston via Craigslist, I suppose I'm expecting something more exciting than what's happened so far today to materialize.

Admittedly, I fell out of bed this morning and started putting together one of those white laminate organizer things to go into Liza's utility closet, then went downstairs and did as much as I could to make her condo entranceway - which is also her office - a little more appealing and welcoming, before going on a wild goose chase with her to the few bookstores still left in Harvard Square in search of "Move Your Stuff, Change Your Life", my favorite Feng Shui book ever.

That was totally fruitless and resulted in me just going to Alibris to get a second-hand copy, and Liza and I are now both sitting on her couch on our respective laptops watching CNN cover the search for Falcon, the six-year-old boy who - well, instant update - is alive and well at home. Mars square Venus?

Mars square Mercury

I've been so lax about keeping this blog up I should probably have been shot or something, but the U.S. being the free country it is I am still alive to walk the earth, which I am currently doing in Cambridge, Mass., thanks to the subject line.

When the Sun was trine Uranus last week and I was busy packing up my Canon Powershot from Walmart that never worked to go back for repair and installing software for the printer I must have bought five minutes before I left for the airport to go to Silver In May, I didn't post.

When Mars was opposed to the MC and I was trying unsuccessfully to apply for an American Express card online, I didn't post.

When Mars was sextile the ascendant and I was glued to Craiglist placing an ad to sell my Silver neighbor's classic truck and
trying to get myself a ride to Boston for myself and my sedated cat, I didn't post.

And even when Mars squared Mercury last Friday and my camera came back fixed and I put the right cord in the old PowerBook Liza gave me (!) and found out it worked after all and six hours before the subject line perfected got an email offering me a ride to Boston if I could be ready in the next hour I didn't post (mainly because I was running around trying to get Rescue Remedy into the cat and some clothes into a bag ha ha) - but that one was enough to get me to post now.

And I promise to be very very good from now on and post at least three times a week because Pluto is in Capricorn and there is no getting away with anything.

Sun sextile Pluto

On Tuesday I managed to make it to the first session of the workshop where I feel I made a total fool of myself, left immediately after all the introductions had been made without hanging around to *network*, came straight home and was in bed five minutes after walking in the door. There was an appointment I had to keep at ten on Wednesday morning, but I came straight home afterwards, went back to bed and stayed there for the next 24 hours. I have no recollection whatsoever of any dreams, but with this aspect perfecting while I slept, I'm sure if I had any they were transformational.

Venus Square Uranus, Venus opposed to Mars

Venus square Uranus was exact at 4:00 p.m. yesterday, Monday, the day I came back to New York from Silver. A relatively new friend - Venus? - one I've been playing tennis with, drove me to the airport (El Paso, a three hour drive from Silver - (unusual? Uranus?) She did most of the driving as I was barely conscious after what seemed like two solid weeks of trying to get the house ready for the tenants, with very little sleep the last two nights as it became increasingly clear I wasn't going to finish what I wanted to.

Sweet Pea was no help at all. He decided not to come home till 4:45 am on Monday, so every hour on the hour I was awake and opening all four doors to the outside one after the other calling for him, with him probably curled up on one of the wicker chairs on the front porch ignoring me totally. Finally, 15 minutes before the alarm was due to go off so I could get up and finish the cleaning I still had to do, I heard the little yip that passes for a miaow for him, opened the front door and in he came. Good in one way, as he had something to eat and promptly went to sleep, meaning I didn't have to listen to him whining to go out as would have been the case if he'd stayed in all night.

We made it to the airport with an hour to check in, plenty of time, and if Bridget driving me was a bit of a stretch for Venus square Uranus, maybe it came at about two as I was attempting to get the Pea out of his carrier so I could carry him through security, always one of his favorite things to have done to him. I managed to pry him out of the box with his head and front legs hooked over my right arm, back legs with all claws extended scrabbling furiously at my thighs, and as I staggered doubled over through the archway heard one of the security people saying "Beautiful cat."

As for the Venus opposed to Mars, manifesting at seven am today, it was probably the semi-emergency landing we made at LaGuardia at midnight. Evidently the pilot wasn't sure if the landing gears were down or not (?) and we were told to probably expect a loud grinding noise and sparks as we touched down, neither of which happened, but we were met by several emergency vehicles, lights flashing, and had to be towed to a gate. We'd already been delayed an hour in Chicago, all the kerfuffle took another hour, and the end result for me was I was so out of it by the time we were able to disembark I left my favorite reading glasses in my favorite metal case my sister gave me in the seat pocket of 31A.

Sun conjunct Chiron

I don't know what I'm missing here, but I'm pretty sure that as this perfected I was in Radio Shack returning the unopened piece of crap camera I bought in a frenzy on Saturday, when Jupiter sextiled the Sun. Two people I vaguely know were in the store at the same time, and as we acknowledged that we had met before, one of them said "Oh, you're the New Yorker from London", to which I gave my toss of the head and self-deprecating "uh" noise, my usual response to being so identified.

Was that Chiron? *Should* I have smiled and said "That's me", because it is and I am? Whether I should or not, I can't say that I was distressed and hurt, the way astrology cookbooks say I *should* have felt. Au contraire, I was feeling totally pleased with myself that I was taking the stupid camera back and getting the refund to my credit card immediately, instead of sticking the unopened box in a closet and paying $142 for something I bought on impulse that wasn't what I wanted.

So I dunno. The slowest moving planet wins, according to Michael Lutin. This must have been Pluto in the Eighth and self-mastery at last. Yeah, right.

The Saturn/Uranus Opposition and Me

With a natal Midheaven at 25 Capricorn and an IC at 25 Cancer, I feel incredibly fortunate that the degree of the latest of these oppositions fell where it did, handing me Saturn trine the MC and Ascendant and Uranus sextile the MC and trine the IC.

As far as I can break it down and simplify it, it's like this:

Uranus sextile MC - being accepted as an observer by the Actors Studio even though I don't have any of the qualifications.

Uranus trine IC - stumbling across tenants willing to fix up the barn at their own expense so they can bring their horses from Maine.

Saturn trine MC - being astonishingly productive about getting the house ready for new tenants. Paperwork not exactly up to date but I still have a week.

Saturn trine Ascendant - people seem very impressed to find out I'm a playwright.

Add in Jupiter to the Moon sextile the Sun and today was definitely the day to buy a new camera, as well as labeling all the shelves in the pantry so the new tenants will know where everything is. Not sure where tennis lessons fit into this, but it must be somewhere.

Uranus sextile the Midheaven Retrograde

The last time this happened – this is the second pass of three – was when I was in New York in April of this year and That Is What I Did was supposed to be performed at a senior center on the Lower West Side. As it happened, one of the scheduled actors died and one was sick, so that was the end of That Is What I Did.

Second pass, really and truly to my amazement, the email coming on the day the aspect was retrograde exact, was an email granting me Observer Status - no commenting on other people's work, no presenting my own work - to this year's Playwrights/Directors workshop at the Actors Studio. I think I commented on this with the "And I Thought It Was Me" headline, for Saturn trining the MC, but who cares? I've been accepted into the Actors Studio at worm level, and couldn't be happier about it – although having Jupiter stationed conjunct the moon might have something to do with it.

More to be revealed.

And I Thought It Was Me

I had such a productive week I was amazed at myself. I listed the house as a rental on Craigslist, both on the Las Cruces list and then on the Anchorage one after someone told me a lot of people from Alaska come to Silver in the winter. Two weeks before deadline, I proofed the special edition copy of Soldiering On that Oneactplaydepot is printing, then in spite of knowing I didn't meet the qualifications, applied to a Playwrights/Directors Workshop at the Actors Studio that a member friend told me about.

(Whether that last can truly be called productive could be up for discussion, as there's not a chance I'll be accepted, but it made me write a letter introducing myself as a playwright and send a writing resume, a completed one-act and 10 pages of the play I've been working on on and off for 12 years, and anything that makes me actually admit that I write plays can, for me, only be good.)

I paid the house insurance on time, remembered to transfer money from savings (hah!) into checking in time to cover my New York rent, ordered and picked up my Celexa Rx from Walmart, kept my appointment with Silver City's only dermatologist and happily found myself to be skin cancer free - the list of responsible and adult things I did would be even longer if I could remember them ha ha, and so help me God I had a few discrete moments of congratulating myself on my sudden ability to focus and - dare I write this even knowing no one will read it? - put it down to Pluto stationing in my eighth house of Self Mastery. Aaarrrggghhh!

Today, Labor Day, I played tennis if you want to be generous (batted a ball backwards and forwards with someone almost as pitiful as me if you don't), came home, dragged great big rocks around, which is known as gardening here in Silver City, for four hours, took a shower and began to look at what I have of Act II of the play I've been working on for 12 years. As it's Monday I turned the page over in my Week at a Glance desk diary where I keep track of transits and there, written in for Wednesday the 9th, in my very own hand-writing and in red ink, it says Saturn trine Midheaven exact. Talk about a letdown, but at least I can still laugh.

Venus Square Sun

True confessions time: went to Walmart this morning (which is NOT the true confession), among other things bought two four-packs of instant pudding, one butterscotch, one chocolate, had eaten all eight servings by 6:00 pm.

Venus in Three...

...and the first thing I do is back the car over a log in the driveway and get a flat on my way to play tennis with a partner I barely know. Fortunately, I do know her name, find her in the phone book and catch her just as she's leaving her house to meet me. I tell her our session is off and she immediately suggests driving out to where I live and changing the tire for me, an offer I am not about to refuse. I tell her where I live - four miles out of town - and am thankful I know enough to be able to get the spare out of its hiding place in the cargo compartment of the Volvo before she arrives.

I left the car on a slope in the driveway as soon as I realized what had happened, and the first thing she suggests is driving it onto level ground. I do that, and watch while she finds the right place to hook in the jack and starts to raise the car. You need to loosen the lug nuts while the wheel's still on the ground, she says, as if you do it when the wheel's in the air it will just spin and make getting them off much harder. I nod sagely, scarcely able to believe my good fortune.

Suddenly the jack collapses and the wheel is back on the ground. B says it's all her fault for not putting bricks in front of the front wheels and for placing the jack on gravel. The paving stones I bought two months ago for landscaping are still where I put them when I took them out of the car, and we put two in front of each of the front wheels. I suggest looking for a bit of old wood to put the jack on, but B says clearing away the gravel will be enough. It is, except now the jack is bent and no longer fits. B goes to get hers from her Suburu and lo and behold, it works. "We" - me wearing the white gloves that so help me God are in the tool kit of the Volvo and B doing all the work with bare hands - get the punctured wheel off and try to fit the spare on to the lug nuts.

No go. How can I have a spare that doesn't fit? I have no answer to this, but it doesn't, so I go into the house to call Triple A. While they're telling me all they can do is tow me somewhere where I can get a new tire, B yells from outside that she's sussed it and I hang up. There's a little spoke that sticks out and a corresponding hole on the spare that needs to be aligned before it will fit. Spare tire and tennis practice are on, and now I know how to fix a flat.

Saturn conjunct Jupiter

This is the third and final pass of this, and I wish I could remember the effects of the first two. Manifestations of this third go-around involved attempts at getting the house cleaned out and organized. I don't have my astrology diaries here or I could look back and see what was going on when Saturn squared Jupiter seven years ago in 2003. Certainly the house was full of junk/stuff then, as all of Paul's stuff was here, a lot of John's still, and I was slowly sending myself out things from New York I thought I couldn't live without.

As the stars would have it, I was asked to join in a communal yard sale today, and spent a lot of last week and all of yesterday sorting through and pricing things, most of which had been left behind by various and assorted renters or were still leftovers from John and Paul. Prize item here was a life-sized baby doll - Phoebe - left behind by last winter's tenants. Its/her arms were loose and hanging out of their sockets, craftily concealed by clothing it/her in a baby sleeping bag thingie so you couldn't tell. Earlier in the week, in my dreams, I had thought I might replace the worn-out elastic holding the arms together with something with less give, but that was in my dreams and this morning I decided Phoebe, with full disclosure of her disabled status, could be free to a good home.

The sale was in a not heavily populated area of town (as though any area of this town is heavily populated) and when the first customer arrived mind-morning we were told there were four columns of yard sales listed in the Silver City Daily Press for today. In spite of admitting, at my prodding, that he had female grandchildren, he turned Phoebe down, as did the next four non-purchasing arrivals, and it was only when an expert knitter friend showed up that I was able to unload Phoeb as a model for her baby clothes. (By this time I had demonstrated Phoebe's infirmities so many times her arms had fallen off completely and were loose in the bottom of her sleeping bag.) Admittedly not a great example, but as we realized as the morning wore on, the economy here is so bad you can't even GIVE things away.

I think I made four sales for a total of $11 and bought a pair of reading sunglasses for $5 from one of the other vendors, so if I dare look in my money pouch I probably have $6 more than I had when the sale started, and I still have a station wagon loaded with stuff I don't want. I have at least decided that none of it is allowed back in the house and will have to go into the little adobe storage shed up the hill. This of course means that all the REAL junk - old headboards, bits and scraps of plywood, furniture too rickety to stand on its own, lengths of leftover molding too short to use - has to be removed and taken to Restore (where I bought most of it anyway) to make room for the garage sale stuff. The most I can hope for is that I get that done before Saturn gets to Pisces and opposes Jupiter.

Jupiter Square Ascendant Exact...

...and I cancel the earthlink account I've been paying $34.95 a month for even when I'm not in New York to use it, shooting myself in the foot as I'll probably be back in New York before too long and will now need to set up a Verizon account a week or so before I get there and hope for the best.

I was supposed to be paying $25 a month, after my conversation with them last year, but that expired and was a special promotion anyway, they told me, and I was back to $34.95. That in itself was a vast improvement over the $49.95 they had been charging me, but still, in this 'ere recession and all, $34.95 seemed like a lot to be paying when I wasn't using it. Of course they had just billed me for a month, so I have service even though I'm not there till the 14th or so of August, and will probably go to New York in September.

Next on the recession list is Dish Satellite TV, which appears to be charging me $73 a month when service began three years ago at something like $49. ADT home security is already cancelled, or will be as soon as John contacts them as my name wasn't on the original service order, saving me $30 a month. Trash pickup, at $40 a quarter, has been cancelled, and I made a trip to the dump - excuse me, landfill - last week with all the bags in the back of the Volvo.

Next comes adding it all up to see how much I'm saving a month, and then figuring out what to do with the "extra" money.

Jupiter, Neptune and Chiron square the Ascendant

Seeing as how my last post here seems to have been way back in June and it's now July 11th, I suppose what this aspect means to me is that this poor blog is being totally neglected as there are so many more time-consuming things that are going on. My daily engagement book (hysterical laughter) is full of cryptic notes - Sun square Neptune, squeaked in on time with credit card payment -Mercury trine Chiron, find out Nicola is staying in Spain - but there doesn't seem to have been time to settle in at the computer and write up one day's aspect. Today though, with the aspect, Chiron R square the Ascendant exact tomorrow and today's manifestation, are (is?) too good even for a frazzled person not to write up, pardon my syntax.

Since March or so 2002, when I was finally *allowed* by my ex-employer's insurance company to go to a psychiatrist not of its choosing, I've been taking 300 mg. daily of Wellbutrin XL, a time release antidepressant. At first, the cost of this was covered by the insurance company, and then by the $3,000 allowance from the 9/11 Mental Health Victims' Fund (I think that's what it was called).

When that ran out, I intended to call GlaxoSmithKline and ask if they made out-of-date medication available to those who couldn't afford the real thing, but was told in time by the psychiatrist I see that there's a program called Bridges to Access by which GSK make medication available to those whom Dame Edna calls paupers at no charge. Since then, having enrolled in the program with the help of Dr. M, I call every three months and request a refill of my 300 mg. Wellbutrin XL, which is promptly mailed to me.

Today, with about 14 pills left, I called for my refill and was told by a very nice lady at the other end of the phone that GSK has relinquished all rights to Wellbutrin XL to a company called Biovail and can no longer provide that specific medication through Bridges to Access. She told me a letter saying just that had gone out to all patients and doctors concerned at the beginning of June, and was surprised that I hadn't received it. She gave me a phone number for Biovail and suggested I call, and also suggested I visit my doctor to see what he or she had to say. I didn't tell her I was in New Mexico and my doctor was in New York, thanked her very much for all her helpful information, and determined to make an entry here before the day was out. Sometimes one could wish astrology were not quite so literal.

Mars sextile Mars

How, how, how I should like to know does the universe conspire or the stars align or events transpire in such a way that two days before Mars sextiles Mars for me, I go to a neighboring couple's house to help celebrate their 40th (!) wedding anniversary and quite by chance (yeah, right) park myself down next to the husband of the woman I was supposed to play tennis with back in September last year but never did because a mutual friend asked me to pick him up at an auto renovation place early in the morning I was supposed to play and me being so selfless and all I completely forgot I had other plans? How does that happen?

Had I known he was her husband I would never have sat down next to him, as I've been bashing myself over the head ever since I didn't turn up for tennis having said I would. Capricorn on the Midheaven, me? It's been so much on my mind that when I asked if I could sit on the empty chair next to unknown man, was graciously granted permission, introduced myself and heard his introduction in return, it took great courage, me being an Aries and all, to immediately launch into an extended incoherent explanation of who I was and how I was the flake who had called nine months ago to see if she could play tennis with his wife and then never showed up, instead of babbling something about having forgotten to get coleslaw and hastily taken off for the buffet table, never to return.

The upshot of this was that on Monday morning, bright and early, 7:30 to 8:30 am to be exact, I was at the University courts making an absolute fool of myself, lunging at and missing ball after ball, but manifesting Mars sextile Mars to perfection. You want action? See Jane leap around and fly swat wildly. "Do you usually play singles?", I was asked by an ultra-polite player.

At 8:30, when a fifth player arrived, I excused myself selflessly, and having promised I would seek out and take tennis lessons before the next Monday, I was pushing my cart around Walmart in a frenzy at 10:53 am, when the Mars sextile Mars aspect perfected.

And when I really think about it, the beginnings of the Monday morning tennis playing go back way further than the Saturday night celebration. First, my neighbors needed to have gotten married in June, 1969. Then their daughter had to have moved to Silver City at some point so they could follow her out here. They had to have bought a house close enough to the house John and I bought so that when my beloved Fluff ran away to join the circus last spring and I posted flyers all over the neighborhood, Mr. 40th Anniversary Neighbor could call me to say he'd seen Fluff down at the creek between our houses - a day too late for me to find Fluff, but it was the first time we spoke.

And of course, once you start this train of thought, you can get back to what made me move to this country in 1963 so that so that so that in about 10 seconds. All way beyond me, but I have to go to Walmart tomorrow for more compost.

Venus sextile Saturn

Now this has been helped along by Mars square Pluto, which perfects tomorrow morning at 7:41 am, and I think gave me the energy to keep going through the afternoon and way into the evening digging up plants that weren't doing well, transplanting them somewhere where I thought they might be happier, enlarging the growing space I've made in an enclosed section of the "garden" by moving the logs that define the growing area, digging up buckets full of good soil from the oak grove and mixing it with compost to put into the enlarged planting area and in general doing so much manual labor that by eight pm I'm forced to come inside and know that for the following day, to all intents and purposes, I'll be out of service, Saturn in Virgo or not.

I get very Martha in the garden - as In Stewart and the space outside the house. I want everything to be exquisite, but exquisite in the sense that God did it and there's no other way it could be so perfect. Translated, that means I can spend hours trying to make a rock, a bit of wood and a dug up piece of ivy, say, look as though they've all been there for the past 10 years or so - moving the rock here, the bit of wood there, digging up the ivy again and again until I'm satisfied and the ivy is about to report me to the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Flora.

If I didn't do everything with a four inch trowel and a bucket I would probably make progress faster, but my idea of the perfect birthday present to myself - one of those wheelbarrows on big wheels like the yuppie stroller thingies that you can push and jog behind at the same time - bit the dust when I realized the terrain here at the house is not suited, to put it mildly , for a wheel barrow of any type - it's all steps and ups and downs and terraced and extremely difficult to drag any kind of wheelbarrow anywhere, hence the trowel and the bucket.

And the point of this? (to be explored at greater length) - Venus in Taurus ( land, earth) sextile Saturn in Cancer (home, but it's difficult) manifested itself today as in the above. And if I can only wait long enough (Saturn) this 'ere "garden" is going to look really beautiful.

Venus conjunct Mercury

This perfected at 4 o'clock this afternoon and in yet another of my pitiful attempts at prediction, I'd decided it would be an email telling me the play I submitted to an evening of new works at the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts in July had been accepted. After all, playwrights from New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada "were strongly encouraged to submit" and if Samuel French in New York had turned me down in May, maybe out here there wouldn't be 800 entries and I would have more of a chance. At the very least, I'd expect to get some kind of good news.

I did. The woman I work for emailed and told me she was depositing money into my account in New York, always a good thing. There's been tons of work lately so the ashes my tenants left in the fireplace are still there and I haven't unpacked yet, but I just might have made enough money to pay my MasterCard bill without having to go into my IRA again. Then John called, at about two, and said he'd like to come out here for July Fourth, something I'd wanted him to do but hadn't wanted to ask him in case he felt obligated. Very Venus and sweet.

The only Venusian element in the file I was transcribing - someone with a very guttural accent talking in extremely technical terms about what I think were volcanoes - is the money I'll get when I get paid for it, so when I heard the ping of a new email at ten past four I happily left Mr. Volcano and went to see if Scottsdale had any interest in my play. I still don't know if they do or not, but I did get an invitation from GMHC in New York inviting me to a "special evening with an outstanding chef" - Suvir Saran - (unknown to me but I live in Pumpkin Center now) "featuring an exquisite five-course dinner with wine pairings" at the cost of only one hundred and fifty dollars.

If that's not Venus I don't know what is, but this was Venus conjunct Mercury, so for your $150 you also get a demonstration by Chef Saran "of his distinctive cooking style" and you learn exactly how to prepare each of the exquisite five courses - in short, information. I don't believe in astrology. I experience it.

Mars conjunct Venus...

...and Sun conjunct Uranus, both perfecting at 7:00 tomorrow morning. Quite an easy call, really; Sun (me) conjunct Uranus (the unusual) - i.e., me NOT transcribing for a day - and Mars (action) conjunct Venus (in Aries natally, in Taurus by progression for the past seven years, land, earth, growing things) - and I get to spend the whole day outside digging up more of the lilac bush and transplanting it all around the house, attempting to weed the cactus garden but giving up, digging up many of the little agave shoots coming up in the cactus garden, putting some of them in a bucket to take to Tom and Brenda's tonight and planting the others at the back of the Bermuda Triangle as you come up to the house, bliss, total bliss, really, and nothing else to say about it.

When I saw my sister in Spain last month I asked her if she knew the poem beginning "The kiss of the sun for pardon." She didn't, and I told her the rest of it - "The song of the birds for mirth, One is nearer God's heart in a garden Than anywhere else on earth."

I thought it was anon but I saw a poster of it at a yard sale in Silva a couple of weeks ago and it was credited to someone whose name begins with a H. It was on sale for ten cents and being the big spender that I am, I bought it and sent it off to my sister. Haven't heard yet that she got it, but that's not surprising, and there's a return address on it so it will come back to me.

The Sun conjunct Uranus thing - I suppose I could go to Tom and Brenda's tonight and do a belly dance or get in an argument with someone - or, or - Michael Lutin always says if it's Uranus and you think you can predict it, you can't because it's Uranus. I suppose by tomorrow morning I'll know, but having a day off work works for me.

Neptune, Jupiter and Chiron...

...square the Ascendant and sextile Mercury. I think. The sextile to Mercury hasn't happened yet (Jupiter will be the winner next Sunday - is that why I'm suddenly back to blogging, or is it because Mars will conjunct Mercury in a couple of days?) and I have a feeling this is more to do with Uranus at the midpoint of the Midheaven and the Ascendant, but whatever it is, I'm suddenly getting emails from people I haven't been in touch with for years (and some I have) who are asking me to be their friend on Facebook and/or LinkedIn, and as I'm not on either site I'm not sure what to do. I don't even have email addresses for a couple of the requesters (?) but as I'm getting email reminders, this is something I need to pay a little bit more attention to.

They all happened within two weeks of each other. (Actually there are only four, but I think that's enough for a trend.) First was completely out of the blue, from a woman who rented the addition in Silva when there was no heat, no flooring, no a lot of other things, never ever complained about anything and endeared herself to me for ever because of that.

But other than my forwarding on to her Christmas cards - always in April or May when I came back out to Silva - we haven't been in touch very much, apart from an announcement recently from her that she was engaged. I responded by congratulating her and next thing I knew I was being invited to be on LinkedIn.

Then John's sponsor when he first went into (joined?) AA asked me to be a friend on Facebook, as did my very oldest friend in the U.S. (someone who asked me what did I think the Internet was good for when I raved about the coffee pot at whatever college it was in Cambridge in 1993) and a friend I've made out here in Silva, the curmudgeon of all curmudgeons on the surface but as I quickly learned, the curmudgeon with a heart of gold.

So do I have to join Facebook and LinkedIn? Or do I attempt to hold on to my (!) Twelfth house Sun that just moved into the Second by progression and continue to write this unread blog? More will be revealed.

Venus conjunct Sun

Most interesting thing about this was that last November, when Venus was on my Midheaven (I really don't like saying that, MY midheaven. It's like saying MY dentist or MY doctor, as though they have no other patients or clients, although I suppose saying MY midheaven is a bit different . (God, what must it be like to be able to make a statement and not then immediately feel the need to qualify it? Obviously something I know nothing about.) )

ANYway, last November when Venus was on my Midheaven I got an email from someone wanting to rent the addition to the house in Silver for the weekend of Silver City's Blues Festival, always held over the Memorial Day weekend. (Several years ago I had posted on the Blues Festival site as having space to rent and then forgotten all about it.) For two days or so we fired emails back and forth and it was agreed that he could indeed rent the addition for the three days for $50 a night. We were on the same wavelength and I loved that his subject line was always part of his first sentence - "I heard you have" in the subject and then the message beginning " a space to rent." As John always says, I am easily amused, but hey, I'm on my own a lot out here and it was more excitement than I usually have waiting for Mail to give me a ping while I was transcribing. It is definitely different here.

But Venus moved off the Midheaven (that's one solution - "the") and into ten - nothing particularly wonderful I can remember about THAT but I'm not doing this religiously - our emails tailed off - stopped abruptly, actually when Venus got two degrees away - and while I didn't forget I was booked for Memorial Day, my renter and I had no contact, I went to New York, stayed for four months, came back, fell in a heap as I usually do when I get here and a couple of weeks before Memorial Day emailed booked tenant to make sure he was really coming.

He was. When I looked at the ephemeris, I realized he was arriving the day before Venus conjuncted my (there it is again) Sun. For one brief and insane moment - I do have natal Venus in Aries - I wondered it there was a possible potential could-it-happen-again relationship "thing" going on here, but came to my senses when an astrology friend pointed out it might well mean we would end up friends.

And that is very probably what will happen. He arrived, was happy with his space, presumably slept well and the next day went off to the Blues Festival while I spent a blissful eight-hour day outside - code for gardening - making the enclosed space behind the back patio larger by putting in an insert of chicken wire, dragging logs around, sowing cornflower seeds, digging up the giant lilac in the front of the house and transplanting it all around so there will be something green growing up by the side of the house, pruning all the dead leaves off whatever is coming back to life and attempting to transplant some of the English ivy except I couldn't find a piece with roots.

And that was my Venus (progressed to Taurus seven years ago when John and I bought this house) to the Sun. Astrology ten, humans one. Again.

My Poor Neglected Blog

I last posted on April 24th? It's not as though it matters as nobody reads this, but still, I'd like to be doing it for myself, obviously not enough to actually be doing it but still...

Is it Neptune, Chiron and Jupiter all either squaring the ascendant or sextiling Mercury, or is that horrible natal twelfth house Sun that I'm stuck with for ever working against me and undoing all my efforts? What efforts, you might ask, or I might, as I'm the only one aware of them.

Well, the efforts to make myself write and put something up here every day, which at the moment seems laughable as I'm back in Silver in a 1,600 square foot house to keep clean and a "garden" I'm trying to bring back to life after it having not been watered for months. And the temperature here is 80 every day with a humidity level of five percent, and instead of taking my one little supermarket bag of garbage down to the hallway every day, I've just dragged a trash container on wheels and carried six large black trash bags down to the Private Drive Keep Out sign so Roadrunner Disposal can pick them up in the morning, and then I get to drag the trash container on wheels back up to the house and stock up on another two weeks of garbage till it's time for Roadrunner to come again.

And the point of all this? None, really, except that if I don't begin to put something up here every day then - well, I don't really know what then, except I don't keep a hand-written astrology journal any more so if I don't do this I won't have any record of how I'm experiencing daily astrological transits, and I've already not written about three weeks' worth of them. Maybe with Saturn finally direct again (while, of course, Mercury is retrograde) I'll be able to get myself back to this record, Neptune, Chiron and Jupiter notwithstanding.

Thank God for Saturn

Last post on here was March 30th, the day before I went to Spain, and now that I've been back a week and done basically nothing (hey, I was sick) my Sun sextiles Saturn for me and I've balanced two checkbooks, transferred money from savings (IRA money), organized my undies and stuff back in the bureau after clearing space for the couple who lived here and took care of Sweet Pea for me and finally made it to the bank to order more Euros to send to my sister as a birthday present for her to get the seven feral cats she's feeding spayed and dad neutered, if she can catch him. There were seven kittens by the time I left so this is a very useful Saturn in Virgo gift.

It's not that I've really been doing nothing since I got back. The morning after I returned I went to a rehearsal at the Senior Center for the show they (well, me as well) were putting on the next day and found myself roped in to more than I expected. Can you sing, I was asked, and before I could say no, my questioner sang the first line from Here we go Again, to which I promptly responded "I hear those trumpets blow again" and was told "You're in", translated as you will jig backwards and forwards with six other people at the beginning of the show and sing "Here we go again, we're puttin' on a show again, here we go again, taking a chance on you," and on the last line point out into the audience at some poor unsuspecting soul, smile broadly and wait for the applause.

It all went vaguely as planned on the day, more or less, all things considered, with all of us on book peering at little pieces of paper and losing our place periodically or reading another person's line, all par for the course and generously overlooked by the audience. Rehearsal and the show took up most of the day. I had plans for dinner that night and woke up Saturday morning with a sore throat, watery eyes and runny nose, and without too much exaggeration slept for the next four days.

In less than a week I have to go back to Silver so I need to sort out paperwork and clothes and go through that charade again, so I feel extra grateful to Saturn for giving me a hand today. What I'll feel next year when I get the first Saturn square after buying the house in 2002 is something else again, but you don't have to be an alcoholic to have one day at a time as your MO.

Test Results - Sun square Saturn opposed to Neptune

Well, it kind of worked, stopping trying to burn CDs on the old G-4 when the Zip Drive needed to get the music there wouldn't mount on the Intel Mac with the music on it. At least when I tried again this morning, when the aspects had passed, the Zip Drive mounted first try and I was able to get the line dancing music onto it and then on to the old G-4 so I could burn CDs.

Everything went well from then on. Well, kind of. The 650MB CDs mounted perfectly on the G-4 and I was able to burn CDs with no trouble. I'd done about five - I needed 20 or so - when a polite little message popped up telling me I could burn only a limited number of CDs. I read it and popped another disk in, burned it, popped in another, burned it, and that was that. Disk number 8 brought up a still polite but quite definite message telling me I'd burned the seven CDs iTunes allowed me to burn and couldn't burn any more.

Was this the ladies in the line dancing class (Progressed Moon) conjunct Saturn (Steve Jobs)? Wouldn't it have been more likely to be Saturn conjunct Moon? Whatever it was, I could burn only seven CDs, which means there will be 13 or so unhappy ladies in the line dancing class tomorrow.

Sun square Saturn opposed to Neptune - a Test

Hysterical laughter, is what this really ought to be called, but for the first time ever in my life I'm trying to utilize my knowledge of astrology and stop knocking myself out trying to do something I might not be able to do while this aspect is in effect and wait until it's passed, when all obstacles will presumably be removed and all will go smoothly ha ha ha.

I posted last week about Mercury opposed to Jupiter and how I offered to provide CDs of the music we dance to at Line Dancing with Vera to the Thursday morning dancing populace at large. I may or may not have mentioned that I said a CD would cost each purchaser 50 cents. I knew I had a stack of unused writeable CDs here and thought I might get back my iTunes money. Or not. I live to serve (natal Jupiter in Virgo).

As there was no work and I was incapable of doing anything else productive today (Sun opposed to Neptune) I thought I'd make a start on burning the disks for Thursday. I'd already found and downloaded most of the music, but needed Sea Cruise and YMCA. Piece o'cake, got them both, had my Line Dancing NY Playlist all selected and ready for burning and inserted one of the disks I've had here for ever - Gigaware (ah yes, a very well-known name brand) 700 MB CD-Rs, bought God knows where and when but presumably useable. Nothing.

Nothing showed up on the desk top. The dreaded beachball from hell which I just found out Apple calls a gear turned and turned and turned until I had to go to the Finder and force quit iTunes. Never one to give up easily, I thought maybe that disk had gone bad or something because it was on top of the pile and put in the second one down. I'd used these disks before, for goodness sake, or they wouldn't be here. Same thing. Nothing recognized, spinning beach ball, force quit again. Time for Apple discussion boards.

Aha! Seems that newer computers need 650 MB CD-Rs (don't ask). A Radio Shack is half a block away so off I go, do you have any 650 MB CD-Rs? Short answer is No, have you tried Staples? No, I say, leaving and preparing to cross First Avenue so I can go up to Lex and see if Staples have 650 MB CD-Rs. But the bell goes off. Wait a minute, I'm trying this on the Intel computer I brought from Silver. The old G-4 I used to use here is in the living room, not connected to the Internet, parked there until I go back to Silva and the Intel Mac with me. The 700s must have worked on that. Back to the apartment, 700 MB disks are read by old G-4 Mac, but downloaded songs are on Intel Mac. Get out Zip Drive (remember them?). Connect Zip Drive to Intel Mac. Intel Mac cannot read Zip Drive. Look at aspects, Sun square Saturn opposed to Neptune. Decide to wait till next morning when aspect passed. First real empirical test of astrology.

Jupiter sextile Sun

And conjunct the Moon, in my case, with Sun at 18 Aries and Moon at 19 Aquarius. Another aspect it would be nice to be born with, no? And if you had Jupiter at 18 Gemini, then every time....oh well, never mind. I love myself for who I am and work with what I have.

It does feel like a long long time since I've felt this good. I meant to say to Dr. M this morning that maybe I should stop taking the medication, as I'm not the slightest bit concerned about not having money and there being no work, although of course I do have money, for another two years or so if I'm lucky before I have to join the Hemlock Society.

But all I did was tell him about Drama Workshop with Frank and Line Dancing with Vera at the senior center, and how I was going to take him a copy of the play I wrote after realizing the therapist who was murdered last February shared his office space but I don't have any copies of it ha ha, but as soon as I get some I'll send him one, and then asked if he had any samples of Celexa as I'm going to be in Spain and my prescription's running out.

I did tell him I've had an epiphany since I came here from Silver in January, that it's time to stop going from here to there and back again the way I've been doing, since that means I never build a life in either place, and that I'm comfortable here finally after 9/11. He told me I looked relaxed and happy, which I take to mean I've never looked like that before in his presence, and God knows I know I didn't look like it for years after 9/11. I said it was because when I asked Beginner Spanish instructor last night if he thought I could go on to Intermediate Spanish next session he told me I should be there now, which did indeed make me feel as emotionally satisfied as Jupiter to the Moon is supposed to, although I missed out the part about Jupiter and the Moon.

Anyway, he seemed pretty happy to see me happy, and gave me samples of something called Lexapro as he didn't have any Celexa, so we shall see if Lexapro continues to keep me happy. There's a sexless figure with one leg standing on a spiral with its arms out to its side and a disembodied head floating over its body on the packet, and it's escitalopram oxalate, so I'm sure I'll be fine. At least until Jupiter reaches 20 Aquarius.

Venus sextile Uranus

This is one of those aspects that makes me think about what it would be like to have been born with it. Cancel - every aspect makes me wonder what it must be like to have been born with it, but this one makes me WISH I'd been born with it. Cancel that, though, because if you were born with it, you'd *just* think life was like that all the time, which of course it would be, for you - spontaneous little off-the-beaten-path jaunts somewhere with a good friend where you could buy yourself an amusing little trinket and then go and have fabulous foreign food. Day after day after day after day after day. Maybe I don't wish I'd been born with it because then, as my grandmother always said of a coat worn inside when you had to go back out in the cold, I wouldn't appreciate it. Anyway, to hell with the meaning of life. I had Venus in 12 sextile Uranus in the first today.

All YB and I were going to do was go for a walk in Central Park, unusual enough for me but I've just rediscovered it after 45 years as I've had relatives visiting from England. It was supposed to be a beautiful day and we were going to meet at the Boathouse at 1:30 and wander around a bit.

It wasn't a beautiful day. It was colder than it was supposed to be, and then YB was taking her nephew somewhere and I got it into my head than when JDG came to visit this coming weekend I'd go back on the bus with him to Cherry Hill to say hello to his mother and sister, stay a couple of hours and come right back to the city. He's coming on the Boltbus, which costs $1 if you make a reservation far enough in advance, so I was on the phone with him for longer than I wanted to be trying to get a reservation on the same bus he was going back on and getting so kerfuffled I was asking for a reservation for that day, Sunday, and everything was showing up as Sold Out - anyway meeting at the Boathouse at 1:30 became a joke and we switched to meeting at the Daffy's on 57th at Lexington at 2:30.

I went to the Container Store first, as I'm looking for small plastic bottles to put my super strong sunscreen in when I go to Spain next week. They had two ounce and four ounce, and of course I want three ounce, the maximum amount of anything you're allowed to take on a plane with you in one bottle, so that was fruitless, but I struck it lucky in Daffy's. They had longish black cotton dresses for $22.99 in the Junior section and I was able to squeeze myself into the XL, found a pair of M grey silk pants that looked as though they'd fit me, got four pairs of undies and then saw this completely tasteless and absolutely fabulous Betsy Johnson handbag that I can use as a carry-on - black handles, silver and black fake pony-skin body. I can take it almost empty and if I do get any loot, use the bag to carry it back.

By then, YB had arrived saying why didn't we go to Chinatown, which I didn't want to do at first as with great effort I've managed to get five pounds off my frame so I can even think about putting on a swimsuit and going to Chinatown always involves eating. Salt.

But we went, to our favorite vegetarian Dim Sum place, and had fried turnip cakes and green beans in fermented sauce with shitake mushrooms and they got it just right and everything was so so good, and then we took the subway off to our respective destinations and maybe I do wish I had Venus sextile Uranus natally.

The pants don't fit.

Mercury opposed to Jupiter

Line dancing this morning at the senior center, after Drama Workshop with Frank which I had to leave half an hour early as Vera, our dance instructor, was offering semi-hopeless cases like me a pre-class 30 minute semi-private coaching session. Again and again she took the four of us through "Sea Cruise," which I gather is the group's signature dance, until even I had it fixed in my head and could go through the steps in the right sequence and remember what to do when the dance began again.

At 10:30 the regulars began to file in. We dance in half of the lunch room, with the tables pushed back. First dance was the one we'd been practicing earlier, and of course I found myself stumbling even though I'd been doing it perfectly before. I find it difficult to remember the sequence of steps and the whole thing is tremendously humbling, not that I really need that, but the glorious thing is that no one cares if you do it "wrong" and there's no judgment. Certainly you need a heavy dose of Aquarius in your chart to be able to do it (line dance at the senior center, I mean), but with an Aquarius Moon in 11 and Uranus in the first, I seem to be able to overlook the ripeness in the air by about 11:15 each week and concentrate just on the good stuff.

Anyway, Miss I Live to Serve here with Jupiter in Virgo at the end of the fifth found herself volunteering to download the music to all the dances we do, burn X number of CDs and bring them to next week's session for the giveaway price of 50 cents a disk. End of Mercury opposed to Jupiter post.

Everything in 11

Is that enough of an excuse for not having posted for almost two weeks? Works for me. What with Spanish class on Mondays, Playwrights Unite on Wednesdays and Drama Workshop with Frank AND Line Dancing with Vera on Thursdays, plus of course transcribing from home whenever there's work and trying (not nearly hard enough) to finish Just For You before I go to Spain in two weeks, keeping up-to-date with everydayastrology has fallen by the wayside. I mean, by the time you've gotten up, made coffee, read the Silver City Sun-News online, played marbles with the cat and gone out to get raspberries from the fruit man on the corner, the day's shot.

I've still been going to Astrodienst (the only site that I pay money for to subscribe to, pardon my syntax) once a week, and jotting down daily transits in my 2009 engagement book, but there's been no correlation of events and transits - no as above/so below - powerful enough to get me on here posting. Is that because Neptune's squaring my Ascendant and I'm off in dreamland somewhere? Is astrology losing its grip on me after 12 years? Presumably not, as here I am writing this.

Do I feel so good because it's nearly spring, I haven't worn my winter coat for weeks and I'm going to see my sister in Spain in two weeks, or is it because the Progressed Sun has just moved into the second house for me and finally, at the age of 63 very nearly 64, I'm happy and content to be what and who I am and supremely grateful for all of it? Is my sister-in-law here on a week's vacation from England because my Progressed Moon just went into Cancer, or it is Venus retrograde that puts her in my life after seven years? Am I putting the Sweet Pea out to play on the fire escape because I have an Aquarius Moon natally or does he have everything in Five at the moment?

Of all the questions, that's one I'll never know the answer to. I brought him home from the shelter in Silver City on April 4th last year, and all they could tell me about him was he was somewhere around nine months old, which would make him a Cancer. That fits perfectly, as he (almost) always stays around the house in Silver and hasn't strayed far on the fire escape, not that he can as I only just realized there's no ladder down and if there ever were a fire, God forbid, I would have to stand out there and hope someone came and got me before the building fell down.

Anyway, thanks to Astrodienst, I know that apart from all the ego losses I'm supposed to be undergoing right now, my next upcoming transit, other than lunar ones which even I am not obsessive enough to track, will be at 3:45 am on Thursday, when the Sun will oppose Chiron for me. So far, I have no plans for Wednesday. More later.

Mercury in Eleventh House

This began on Saturday but I've been in a frenzy of writing and sending material out and haven't had time to focus. Certainly it was a friend (11th house) who came over yesterday to help me with a play submission ( goals) to Samuel French, and two friends I emailed at least three weeks ago have responded in the past couple of days and we're making plans to meet in the coming weeks.

It's more and more obvious to me it's impossible to sort out the life path progressions in the background, the current transits to the natal stuff, biggies and little 'uns, and the stuff involving other people that life throws at you all the time, and say, as an astrologer to a client, this is what is going to happen to you, which seems to be all that people who go to astrologers want to know.

Of COURSE it's all they want to know! It's what I'd want to know if I went to an astrologer, but with me being so clever and all I can't do that, I need to obsess over my own chart with my twelfth house Sun and my Jupiter in Virgo and think that with Pluto coming to oppose my end-of-second-house Saturn and square Neptune in six it's time for me to sell the house in Silver and come back to New York to live and...and...and...

Progressed Mars Conjunct Venus

So it's official - Venus has nothing whatsoever to do with love, for me. Over the past couple of years, Pluto's been trining Natal Venus, supposedly bringing me the most intense, lasting love of my life, and just in case it didn't, progressed Mars has been moving towards Natal Venus at the same time, culminating in the exact conjunction at the beginning of March.

No sign of any suitors down on bended knee, but a lot of playwriting activity and finally the company I used to work for managed to send me the requested remnants of my 401K, asked for a month ago. That's it in the money department, but art - if you can call playwriting art and I don't know what else you would call it - is going strong.

I've managed to finish and send off the preface I was asked to write for a special edition of one of my 9/11 plays, Soldiering On, published by Oneactplaydepot. Thanks to a friend, I've been accepted into a playwriting group where I can hear work read and get or not get critical feedback, as I wish, and this forced me to come up with a writing resume and actually type Pamela Reeves, Playwright. Frank, who runs the drama workshop at the senior center, has been saying encouraging things about my work and wants to have one of his other groups read the ten minute play I wrote a year ago. The Dramatists Guild submission opportunities email this morning was for an evening of short plays in Scottsdale, with playwrights from Arizona and New Mexico especially encouraged to submit, I actually read some of the two act I'm working on to my sister over the phone and promised I'd have it finished to show her when I go and visit in April, and again thanks to a friend (Natal Moon in Aquarius in the Eleventh) I just submitted a one-act to Samuel French for their July Festival.

And maybe just to prove I'm not totally rejected and despised (burning all my CDs into iTunes so I can sell them and just got to Handel's Messiah), the Pea came up on the bed and slept with me for ten minutes the night this aspect was exact, last night.

Saturn Conjunct Jupiter

Kind of a biggie, I suppose. The most I seem to have been able to do is begin to rewrite a preface I'm supposed to be writing for a special edition of Soldiering On, the better - i.e. more considered - of the two plays I wrote about 9/11. I've also done a lot of throwing out of stuff from the apartment and tried to make myself come to terms with having to sell the house in New Mexico. I've also realized - today, when the aspect was exact - that the Pea must have ringworm, just like me.

The patch on my upper right arm has been disappearing slowly since I started with the Lotrimin three (?) weeks ago, and truly, it never occurred to me that the Pea would get it.. He's a domestic long hair, loves to be brushed now that it's one of the highlights of his day as he can't go outside, and it was only this morning as he was lying on top of the table, waiting for grooming time, that I realized he was looking very normal and like an "ordinary" short hair. The hairs on top of his head were like any other cat's - his head was a normal sized cat head, no halo of fluffy grey hair sticking up over his ears, no fuzzy long ruff around his neck, nothing to distinguish him from any other short-haired cat.

THIS is the manifestation of Saturn conjunct Jupiter? Ringworm in my cat as well as me? Responsibility when it comes to small animals? (Jupiter in Virgo almost in six?) Whatever it is, I realized today the Pea probably has ringworm and has to go to a vet tomorrow. Was hoping I could put it off till I was on another credit card statement, but I guess not.

Jupiter Trine Uranus

Well if it takes this to get me to do my Spanish homework more than an hour before the start of class, I don't think I'll be saying too much in Spain in April except "Me llama Pamela." I mean, I know I'm leading a very little life at the moment, but still, you'd think something a bit more exciting than this would manifest. I would, anyway, especially with Mars also trine Uranus this afternoon. But when I think about it, it's perfect - Jupiter (foreign lands) trine Uranus (unusual) and I actually make an early start on Spanish homework.

There was certainly a bit of split-second timing to the day. I went to the library when I'd finished working ( a Uranus (computer) nightmare) to see if I could get any more Denise Pima books, a mystery author I've just discovered and like a lot. The library happens to have a downstairs book store selling donated books and library cast-offs, and there was a big sign saying "Mysteries Half Price." This seemed like an opportunity to behave like a good American and keep my green card in good standing so I went down and lo and behold, they had both the titles I was looking for for two dollars each instead of four.

Emboldened by this success, I asked if they had Barbara Pym's autobiography, 'A Very Private Eye.' I never liked her books, but was all prepared to throw caution to the winds and squander another two dollars if they had it. The biography man did a double take when I asked him. "It just came in!' he said. 'That's amazing, someone else asked for something today and that had just come in! Do you know how often that happens?' I didn't, but his enthusiasm was enough to let me know it wasn't very often.

"Now where is it?" he said. "I just had it in my hand." He looked through all the books he was shelving in the back, then decided he must have put it out on the shelves already. "Follow me!" he said, and I trotted off after him and we both looked through all the Ps on the biography shelf. Nothing. Back to the back room, more "I just had it in my hands," (something I find myself saying about ten times a day now that I'm in my dotage), one more trip out to the big room, back to the newly donated books again and aha! He found it, except it was a biography and not the auto-biography I was looking for.

Never mind. He was agreeable, helpful, knowledgeable (he told me about a couple of other Pymmy authors), obviously loves books and said he'd keep an eye out for Private and to stop by again when I'm in the neighborhood. So now when I've finished as much of my homework as I can stand to do I can get in my little beddie with an unread-by-me Denise Pima and bliss myself out for five minutes before I fall asleep. !(pretend that's upside down) Que suerte!

Hard to Isolate This One

Well, Saturn's coming to Jupiter next week, Mars is coming to oppose Pluto in the next few days, Venus trines Pluto and the Sun squares the Ascendant tomorrow, and when I went to line dancing at the senior center this morning it wasn't cancelled. By eleven a.m. I was in a chorus line of 15 or so 60- to 80-year-olds doing high kicks to New York New York and in my case, looking out the window on to the FDR Drive and the East River and Randall's Island wondering if this was following my north node in Cancer in three so that as Michael Lutin says, everything will come to me.

Not true. I wasn't thinking about anything in that chorus line because I was completely and totally in the moment, arms interlocked with a complete stranger on each side of me and doing my best to follow Vera, our 75?-year-old leader in the middle of the line, as, loud and clear and looking over her shoulder to make sure we were all following, she told us all what to do next.

Really and truly, it was only when class was over and I was turning on to First Avenue from 93rd Street that I remembered all the north node stuff. WIth natal north node in the third house, supposedly one of the ways for me to go towards the future and fulfillment here on earth(!) - something like that, anyway - is community involvement, which I've studiously shied away from all my life until last summer in Silver and now here at Stanley Isaacs Neighborhood Center.

With Saturn less than ten degrees away from the node, you'd expect the people it brings me into contact with to be old, and God knows that's proving to be true. Joining age in Silver for the senior center is 50, whereas here in New York it's 60, and I'd bet my life at least five of the women in this morning's line-up were close to 80 one side or the other.

And, of course, another third house interpretation is communication. Hmmm. How do you tell if you feel fulfilled?

Mercury goes Direct

So Mercury goes direct on Sunday and on Monday I decide to set up the computer I had shipped from Silver that's been sitting on a table in the living room ever since. It's a 20" Intel iMac and a thing of beauty, but as it wasn't connected to the Internet I'd been using my old G4 eMac instead. I have a wireless broadband connection in Silver and use Airport, so thought I'd have to install DSL connection software on the iMac.

When I'd inserted the very old Earthlink disk I have, it had been unreadable, so I'd called Earthlink and asked for DSL connection software for an Intel Mac. That came sometime in the middle of January, but I'd not felt remotely compelled to deal with it. I don't know if it was Mercury going direct or me suddenly realizing I'd been here three weeks and hadn't used the computer I spent $45 dollars shipping here and would have to spend $45 to get it back when I go back in May. Whatever it was, I loaded the new connection software and found out it was a Windows disk.

Earthlink has a live chat help system, and I got passed from one "specialist" to another, ending up with number three who told me there was no Total Access software for Intel Macs. Visions of my $90 going down a drainpipe dancing in my head, I asked if that meant I wouldn't be able to get online with the 20". "Oh no," he typed. "You don't need any software, just connect the modem." My usual trusting self, I asked if he could give me his phone number so I could call him directly if that didn't work, but he breezily told me it would and to go ahead and do it.

It did work, immediately, without having to put in any new settings other than un-checking Airport and checking Internal Ethernet. So now the clunky old G4 is on the table in the living room and the beautiful 20" iMac in its place in the whatever this room is - the room in between the kitchen and the bedroom. And, of course, I could have been online the day I took the iMac out of the box, while Mercury was retrograde - except I couldn't because I wasn't. All very chicken and egg.