Sun sextile Neptune

This might have been a wonderful day to withdraw from my normal routine and meditate upon the concerns that are important to me, but it also happened to be the day I needed to get a rewrite of a play off to a theater in England from a small town in New Mexico by next Tuesday - 7/31. I had of course known about the deadline for eleven months - since I missed it by a month last year - but while I piddled around a little bit with it over the winter for some strange reason I was unable to concentrate on it, and only began to focus in round about last Sunday.

Four days sitting behind a computer and finally on Thursday morning (with Jupiter coming ever closer to conjunct Uranus) I was ready to print a clean copy and take myself off to the post office.

Twenty or so pages into it, I get a message my color cartridge has run out and the printer won't work without it, so off I go to Walmart, only five miles away, and buy both a black and color cartridge to be safe.

Back home and try and take a 400-word synopsis down to 200, search out a bio, try to understand the submission requirements (use a pseudonym, staple this to that, put this in a sealed envelope along with an International Reply Coupon (IRC) if you're not mailing from the UK, address the envelope to your pseudonym (!) etc. etc. etc. Round about two o'clock, off I go to the post office, only four miles away.

After being next in line for ten minutes while the man behind the counter has an extended chat with his current customer about his difficulties in losing weight, it's my turn, and up to the counter I go to ask for my IRC, whereupon I'm told a) I'm the first person ever to have asked for one and b) they are no longer sold. I make one attempt at suggesting he contact the nearest big town two hours away and ask if they have any there, but no, he's adamant, *they* don't make them any more and there's no point in his asking.

I ask for a piece of paper, scribble a note to the effect that I will send postage under separate cover at a later date, stick it in the big envelope and get back in line. When it's my turn again, I ask which service I need to get the envelope to England in five days time and am told the first delivery date I can be guaranteed is next Friday, August third.

This being of not much help, I say thank you and take myself off to the UPS depot, but as it's not yet 3:00 pm, their opening time, that doesn't do me any good either. I've promised myself some Albertson's fried chicken as my reward for getting the play off in time (hey - life is what you make it) , so decide to go there first, get the chicken and THEN go back to UPS to send the script off.

There's a UPS store in the strip mall with the Albertson's, so for the hell of it I go in there and ask if they can get the document to England by Tuesday. They can, and it will only cost me $81, but they won't accept the package without a phone number for the theater. I tell them I don't have a phone number and have no way of getting one, so go and buy my fried chicken and go back to the real UPS to see if they'll take the envelope without the phone number.

I punch in all the info at the UPS computer, tell it when I want the package delivered by noon on Monday, and discover if I don't have the recipient phone number I can use mine (?), so I do. The UPS man is already a bit baffled at the mention of a foreign country, but gamely takes my printout, does whatever he does with it, and tells me his computer says he can't do that. I tell him the UPS store says they can, so he tells me to do another printout changing the time I want it delivered, so I make it end-of-day Monday. Again he tells me there's no way his computer is telling him the package will arrive by then, so I have another go and put in end-of-day Tuesday.

I put my finger on the "print" button and push, and - and I swear I am not making this up - the air conditioner stops, the lights go out, the computer screen goes blank and the whole depot loses power. This is what is known as living in the country.

I'm now approaching the time both places have told me I need to have the envelope in by - the real UPS driver goes and picks up at the UPS Store and takes everything to the one flight a day out of the local airport - so off I go again, my fried chicken getting soggier and soggier in its waxed bag, back to the UPS Store where the manager says he never told me they wouldn't take the envelope with a recipient phone number, he just said it would probably delay things as customs calls ahead to notify the recipient they have a *foreign* document on the way.

Fortunately, I am on medication, so simply say "Oh," and seeing an "Ask For Your Triple A Discount" sign on the desk, ask for my Triple A discount, which I how I finally handed over my script to perhaps be delivered by the deadline for the cost of only $78.
When I can summon up the courage, I'm going to track the package, but it's only been in transit for 23 hours so far and I think I'll give it the full two days before I look. I'm not on that much medication.

Jupiter Conjunct Uranus

Yes hello it's me, the one what writes the everydayastrology blog and posts every month or two when the mood strikes. I could look and check when I last posted but would then probably jump into bed and pull the covers over my head, so let's just say something happened today that reminded me not only just how uncannily accurate astrological transits can be when watched closely but how they can indeed *compel/propel* someone into some kind of corresponding action - posting to a blog for the first time in a month or so.

So, based only on memories of being in Las Vegas when the subject aspect perfected last time - twelve years ago - and remembering that I was extraordinarily fortunate when *playing* slot machines at the time - I in my brilliance decided weeks ago that the only thing to do when this aspect perfected next - July 31, 2012 - was to go to Vegas again and give it another go.

My trusty traveling companion was more than willing to indulge and accompany me - we were regular visitors to The Strip until we both became home owners ha ha - and did his usual exhaustive online research to find us a *deal*; three nights at Harrah's , two of them comped, $45 for the third night. Nothing much to complain about there.

Today, Jupiter exactly two degrees away from conjuncting natal Uranus and thus beginning the possible manifestations of the transit, he called to tell me he'd had an offer in the mail from The Venetian for all three nights comped, hotel taxes comped, resort fee comped, had gone ahead and made a reservation and wondered if I still wanted to go to Harrah's ha ha.

I'd just had an out-of-the-blue invitation to dinner when he called, and once I recovered from the excitement of looking at the Venetian's website and wondering if the Pope made a daily appearance in the mini-sized St. Mark's Square, tore myself off the phone and went off to my dinner destination. There was a surprise guest - someone I met when I first came to Silver and was not anxious to meet again - but I survived that, got myself home in the rain, let a very annoyed Sweet Pea in and managed to make this post, wondering what exactly what else might happen before 9:24 am on July 31st when this aspect perfects.

Sun in Cancer Conjunct North Node

If the nodes symbolize people, then you'd (more correct version - one would) expect the subject transit to bring you (one) into contact with the sort of earthlings that further your (one's) growth in this lifetime and are good for you (one) to be around, no? Presumably not, if (giving up on more correct version) you have a natal Twelfth House Sun and are at the current state of your soul's evolution that I seem to be at (back to correct grammar - at which I seem to be).

Enough of that nonsense; yesterday, The Glorious Fourth, hip-hip-hooray, God bless America, hamburgers and hot dogs etc., I spent the day completely alone (well, not counting Sweet Pea) and continued putting the house back together after being away for ten months.

I've been doing it slowly for the past two and a half weeks, but things heated up a bit and in the morning I assembled the stand for the keyboard I bought myself for Christmas and have barely touched that's been in bits (the stand, not the keyboard - that's been on the floor) also on the floor since I took it out of its box probably two weeks ago. I opened all the boxes of toiletries (read assorted tiny complimentary hotel bottles of shampoo, body lotion and conditioner) and threw most of them away. I wiped down the shelves in the back room. I took the printer out of the plastic bag it had been stored in and congratulated myself on having taken the cartridges out and keeping them in separate plastic bags. I spent ten minutes looking for the manual so I could replace the cartridges. I did a test page and it worked. I unpacked the hand luggage I'd used on the plane from Cambridge. I -

I, I, I - well, a variation of the above went on all day - all incredibly boring (north node) things that have needed doing since I got here, and a good thing too, as today with the aspect past and *only* the moon aspecting anything in my chart, I can barely get myself to do anything.

Sun Trine Mars

I didn't get very far last year with the expansion of the <tongue-in-cheek> north patio, what with Saturn squaring Uranus and my credit card being hacked and ravens pecking at the utilities pole and knocking out all power to the house and all, but it's quite peaceful around here at the moment and Sunday morning, with the subject aspect 18 hours from perfection, seemed like a good time to pick up from where I left off and get going on it again.

It's got a life of its own, really. I was going to say it's organic until I just looked the word up and realized it isn't, except I just wrote it has a life of its own - anyway, it's not like I had a plan in mind when I started it and every time I work on it I think of something else to do with it.

On Sunday I decided I would make it much bigger than I once thought it would be; that way there wouldn't be so much to water, especially since when the irrigation system was put in it went only as far as - surprise! - there were plantings, leaving quite a big area of bare earth. It was that bare area I realized I could cover with paving stones, and as there were half a dozen piled up, left over from not finishing last summer, that's what I started to do till it got too hot to be outside.

Then it was take down the heavy winter curtains in the living room, give them a sniff to see if they smelled of smoke (they didn't), fold them up and put them in the drawers under the bed and hang the floaty white gauze summer ones, something I've been saying I was going to do every day since I got here.

This made the old sheet that passes as the curtain for the front door, and that never got replaced with its winter counterpart that matches the curtains I'd just taken down, look even worse than it used to, and that reminded me that last year I'd bought a length of cheap pretend Broderie Anglaise, which I found and laid (lied?) on the floor on top of the old sheet to measure.

There was a small cut in exactly the right place, so I'd obviously attempted the replacement when I first bought the fabric. This time I completed the cut and put up the new door curtain, and decided to wash the old sheet one before it went to the thrift shop. I have to walk through the dining room to get to the washing machine, and this made me realize how brown the supposed-to-be floaty gauzy white curtains looked in there.....

I could go on, but if you've read this far you've probably gotten the idea. Reading it through, it doesn't sound like much, but considering I feel as though I've been lying around here in 95 degree heat like a beached whale for two weeks, it was a nice little gift of sustained energy, especially as once it got cooler again in the evening I went out and lugged a few more rocks around to try to make some barriers against soil erosion.

Mars Conjunct Chiron

So with this exact I find myself sitting in bed on Sunday morning googling the interpretation of being naked in a dream, except it wasn't just me that was naked, it was my sister and her husband who live in Spain. We were in a car and had tickets, which I think I'd bought, to see a play in the West End, but had to park the car. I had to park the car, to be exact, as I was the driver, and I kept telling the others to take their tickets and go ahead to the theater, while I would follow as soon as I'd found somewhere to park.

This they wouldn't do, and the three of us wandered around - details are very dim here - in what I remember of the layout of the streets in the West End, ending up in a five star hotel where we appeared to be staying where I was able to park the car in the dining room. (Hey, I said it was a dream.)

Then we started asking staff for the way to an elevator so we could go up to our room and dress, and as I write this I remember the room turned out to be an apartment I had just moved in to in New York, a non-existent in reality apartment I dreamt about for years when I DID live in an apartment in New York - oh boy!

And here was I thinking Mars to Chiron manifested yesterday as asking my elderly neighbor, who I could barely tolerate last year when Uranus was squaring Saturn and whose offers for help I turned down many times, to drive me to the house where some of my house plants had been farmed out and help me get back the table they sit on that had also been farmed out. (He's a Virgo, and that's where Chiron sits for me.)

So now, with Sun trining Mars tomorrow morning, I can either sit here in bed and try to figure out the *meaning* of the dream - naked, inadequacies, parking, plays, no thank you - or, no contest, get up, throw on one of my fetching gardening outfits, and continue taking away more of the landscaping I've done in the past ten years which I realize now is totally impractical and ridiculously time-consuming to keep planted in this climate.

With another 95 degree day forecast, it's do it now or tomorrow, and as I'm still holding on to the belief that the monsoons will start at some point this summer, those rocks that used to make a flower bed at the foot of the front steps need picking up, carrying to the back of the house and being turned into a barrier against the water that I think will soon be rushing down the hill. Or not.