If I weren't so lazy I'd look up what happened when this occurred direct earlier in the year, but my date book/diary is ten feet away on the couch, I'm snuggled up in bed between flannel sheets with this MacBook Air (MBA) and Ginger like a hot water bottle on my feet and I am, so it will have to wait.
All I know is with the subject aspect perfecting yesterday and mixing itself up with Venus trine the Sun perfecting this morning (see opening para), the Neptunian spell I've been under for the past year (!) was broken a little and I managed to do something other than watch back-to-back episodes of the original Upstairs/Downstairs, which can be found on YouTube thanks to someone called LATENITEYORKIE, who I'd link to for you but you have to subscribe to his channel to be able to see anything so unless you've done that there'd be no point.
Simply know that he also has The Duchess of Duke Street among his offerings, which will take care of me for another month or so when I'm done with Hudson and Mrs. Bridges, and as far as I'm concerned he deserves a mention in the New Year Honors.
So - yesterday: with a bit of impetus from transiting Jupiter in Gemini sextiling natal Pluto in Four, these little fingers finally went to work on playing with their house plants, most significantly taking the four tomato plants received as a gift a month ago out of the quart yoghurt container they were living in and repotting them into individual terra cotta containers as advised. Three are doing well and one promptly wilted and died (Pluto?).
Moving on to non-sentient beings, if that's what a TV stand can be called and I don't see why not, I managed to assemble it myself - the stand for my new 32" Samsung that I got myself for Christmas so I can expand my horizons, get out of bed and watch Upstairs/Downstairs via it and my beloved MBA, that is.
That way I was all ready for when the DISH guy came, and now have a 17" APEX non-working TV sitting on a kitchen chair, where it will probably remain until Spring (or when Jupiter comes back to sextile Pluto again and I reform my environment once more ha ha).
Then it was off to the pile of sodden wood that was once the front steps that's been sitting in the driveway, along with a few take-away coffee cups, food containers and scraps of cement bag paper, since the new front steps were built five weeks ago. There were several pieces of new wood, bought for the rebuilt steps and never used, that I've been meaning (read, thinking about) to retrieve, which I finally did yesterday, taking them up to the front porch and lining them up to dry out, adding to the general Habitat for Humanity Restore ambience which now surrounds the house.
I could go on, but once again I'm posting so infrequently there is so much to say I can't be bothered to say it when I attempt to catch up. What did I say about being lazy?
30 December, 2012
18 December, 2012
Sun Trine Mercury
So I hadn't finished my first cup of coffee when the phone rang and it was the man from BofA I spoke to originally when I started the refinance, saying two documents had been requested and not received. Lying through my teeth, I told him I'd be sending them off that afternoon - benefit letter from Social Security and front and back copies of my green card - drove to the mailbox and said a silent prayer when the benefit letter was there.
Back home and started wading through the pile of documents in my BofA Your Home Loan folder (which arrived five days earlier) when the woman who seems to have been assigned to my case called to see if I still wanted the loan. Assuring her I did, I told her I was about to send everything off, then had to call her back to ask if the Request for Tax Documents was to be sent back to BofA or sent by me to the IRS.
Anyway, this was yesterday, and as today I have Mercury square Mars and have already been asked if I can put myself out enough to give a friend a ride (only joking, Tom), I can't be bothered to go on with the very boring Sun trine Mercury manifestation -
Leaping ahead, I took the whole packet down to the local BofA branch, asked a teller if they could fax it, was told to sit down and it would just be a minute, sat for what seemed like 15 minutes and went back to the teller, was told they had only one customer service agent and she would be with me momentarily, went and sat down again, was eventually approached by customer service agent, asked if she could fax all the documents for me, was told she had to go to a different facility to do so and as I had already waited a long time, I was welcome to go back first thing in the morning (today) to pick up the what would then be faxed documents.
Onward and upward to Mars square Mercury, and I now need to make a list beginning "Pick up stuff from BofA."
Back home and started wading through the pile of documents in my BofA Your Home Loan folder (which arrived five days earlier) when the woman who seems to have been assigned to my case called to see if I still wanted the loan. Assuring her I did, I told her I was about to send everything off, then had to call her back to ask if the Request for Tax Documents was to be sent back to BofA or sent by me to the IRS.
Anyway, this was yesterday, and as today I have Mercury square Mars and have already been asked if I can put myself out enough to give a friend a ride (only joking, Tom), I can't be bothered to go on with the very boring Sun trine Mercury manifestation -
Leaping ahead, I took the whole packet down to the local BofA branch, asked a teller if they could fax it, was told to sit down and it would just be a minute, sat for what seemed like 15 minutes and went back to the teller, was told they had only one customer service agent and she would be with me momentarily, went and sat down again, was eventually approached by customer service agent, asked if she could fax all the documents for me, was told she had to go to a different facility to do so and as I had already waited a long time, I was welcome to go back first thing in the morning (today) to pick up the what would then be faxed documents.
Onward and upward to Mars square Mercury, and I now need to make a list beginning "Pick up stuff from BofA."
17 December, 2012
Saturn Square Pluto
Of course this was in effect while Jupiter was conjuncting Uranus, *causing*, I think, all those reverse windfalls when I was handing out fistfuls of dollars to all and sundry, but I came to my senses on the day it perfected and decided to cancel the probably useless skeletal carport I'd ordered, saving myself about a thousand dollars and making myself feel I could breathe again - kind of getting along with less before I'd even spent it. Or something.
The house looks as though it's in the middle of a junk yard. The rotting wooden steps that got replaced are piled in the driveway and the useable bits of railing that the builder was going to incorporate into the new structure are strewn around the garden in front of the addition.
The empty cardboard boxes that I cleaned out of the adobe and broke down to take to the dump are on the back patio, soggy now from the recent rain and snow.
The wooden double-shelf thing I made myself as a kind of outside storage unit (!) is there as well, along with whatever bits of old rubbish I threw out of the adobe and the old broken oblong trash container on wheels, all waiting like pitiful rejected Cinderellas for their magic non-existent pick-up to come along and get them to the landfill.
The little wooden cabinet that got repainted is still sitting on the cloth I put down to protect the patio floor, surrounded by all the bits of flaking paint that got scraped off it.
There are about six empty paint cans sitting on the stone wall, along with tins of paint thinner, roller trays, brushes rolled up in Saran wrap, empty plastic bags from Ace Hardware, assorted rags that were once t-shirts - I could go on but that kind of gives you the general idea, and before I depress myself completely I think I'll give it up for the day.
The house looks as though it's in the middle of a junk yard. The rotting wooden steps that got replaced are piled in the driveway and the useable bits of railing that the builder was going to incorporate into the new structure are strewn around the garden in front of the addition.
The empty cardboard boxes that I cleaned out of the adobe and broke down to take to the dump are on the back patio, soggy now from the recent rain and snow.
The wooden double-shelf thing I made myself as a kind of outside storage unit (!) is there as well, along with whatever bits of old rubbish I threw out of the adobe and the old broken oblong trash container on wheels, all waiting like pitiful rejected Cinderellas for their magic non-existent pick-up to come along and get them to the landfill.
The little wooden cabinet that got repainted is still sitting on the cloth I put down to protect the patio floor, surrounded by all the bits of flaking paint that got scraped off it.
There are about six empty paint cans sitting on the stone wall, along with tins of paint thinner, roller trays, brushes rolled up in Saran wrap, empty plastic bags from Ace Hardware, assorted rags that were once t-shirts - I could go on but that kind of gives you the general idea, and before I depress myself completely I think I'll give it up for the day.
14 December, 2012
Venus Opposed to the Ascendant...
... and trine the MC, and in the hardware store on Tuesday morning, picking up yet another gallon of white oil-based paint, I see the bags of soft black licorice at what I believe is called the Point of Sale and eat the whole packet before I get home - so what if Pluto square Saturn is looming. If I want to squander $2.99 on myself while shelling out hundreds for home improvement I'm just going to go ahead and do it. I'm an Aries.
(I now segue clumsily, an oxymoron I know, into a seeming digression: one of my favorite things to eat is linguine with white clam sauce, but I hate boiling all the water for the pasta and then draining it with all the clouds of steam and having all those pots to clean up, so could never be bothered to go near making it at home.
One fateful day several years ago, I fell across a New York Times recipe for cooking spaghetti by breaking the strands into small pieces - thirds is good - putting it in a deepish heavy-bottomed pan, stirring and sauteing it briefly in olive oil, then slowly adding a bit of water, stirring, simmering, repeating, until the pasta is as al dente as you prefer it - no billowing steam to burn your hands on, no dirtying a colander to strain it through, using only one pot - the lazy person's spaghetti cooking dream.
With that and a little help from Progresso, linguine with white clam sauce became - not a staple - no need to get carried away with this cooking thing - but a once-every-three-months-or-so dinner when I absolutely had to have some carbohydrates. I even experimented a little; using clam juice instead of water, adding a can of clams, squeezing in a clove of fresh garlic, sometimes doing all three variations at once if the moon happened to be in Cancer ha ha. End seeming digression and back to Tuesday morning.)
After the hardware store came Walmart, and with Venus hovering over my shoulder, I was going up and down each aisle I frequent regularly as I had forgotten my list and thought if I did that I would remember what I needed if I saw it. A can of Progresso White Clam Sauce caught my eye. I remembered I already had a bottle of clam juice, a can of minced clams and some angel hair pasta in what passes for my pantry and knew immediately what was going to follow my bag of licorice.
I managed to hold off until about six, by which time Mars getting ready to trine Jupiter the next morning was making itself felt. I'd broken down the dozen or so cardboard boxes I'd taken from the storage shed to make them ready for the dump. I dragged the old broken trash can on wheels where I'd stored my winter clothes in plastic bags out of the storage shed (AKA the adobe) and lugged the better quality non-broken one that lived on the back patio up to the abode in its place. I put the pair of Timberland boots I wore once in 2002 that belonged to Paul, who died in 2001, with the flattened boxes to go to the dump. I asked the current handyman-in-residence if he had any interest in the four boxes of weirdly shaped saltillo tiles left over from redoing the living room floor in 2002. I put gloves on, closed my eyes, and swept into the cobwebs in each corner of the adobe - in short (too late) made a really good first pass at cleaning it out, something I've wanted to do for about five years.
I'd definitely earned my bowl o'carbs, and broke up the angel hair into thirds, forgot that it could be sauteed in olive oil, and put some water in the pot with it to start it boiling. Slowly added more water and clam juice, had it simmering away nicely. Remembered I had bought frozen spinach that morning and decided to cook some to go with the pasta. Did not want to dirty another pot. With Jupiter (optimism) telling me throwing (Mars - action) the bag of frozen spinach into the pot of boiling water and pasta would work out, I did just that, put the lid back on, turned the heat down a bit and left it alone for five minutes or so. Took the lid off, stirred it all up, added a can of Progresso White Clam Sauce and voila! my first astrologically influenced recipe. It was good.
(I now segue clumsily, an oxymoron I know, into a seeming digression: one of my favorite things to eat is linguine with white clam sauce, but I hate boiling all the water for the pasta and then draining it with all the clouds of steam and having all those pots to clean up, so could never be bothered to go near making it at home.
One fateful day several years ago, I fell across a New York Times recipe for cooking spaghetti by breaking the strands into small pieces - thirds is good - putting it in a deepish heavy-bottomed pan, stirring and sauteing it briefly in olive oil, then slowly adding a bit of water, stirring, simmering, repeating, until the pasta is as al dente as you prefer it - no billowing steam to burn your hands on, no dirtying a colander to strain it through, using only one pot - the lazy person's spaghetti cooking dream.
With that and a little help from Progresso, linguine with white clam sauce became - not a staple - no need to get carried away with this cooking thing - but a once-every-three-months-or-so dinner when I absolutely had to have some carbohydrates. I even experimented a little; using clam juice instead of water, adding a can of clams, squeezing in a clove of fresh garlic, sometimes doing all three variations at once if the moon happened to be in Cancer ha ha. End seeming digression and back to Tuesday morning.)
After the hardware store came Walmart, and with Venus hovering over my shoulder, I was going up and down each aisle I frequent regularly as I had forgotten my list and thought if I did that I would remember what I needed if I saw it. A can of Progresso White Clam Sauce caught my eye. I remembered I already had a bottle of clam juice, a can of minced clams and some angel hair pasta in what passes for my pantry and knew immediately what was going to follow my bag of licorice.
I managed to hold off until about six, by which time Mars getting ready to trine Jupiter the next morning was making itself felt. I'd broken down the dozen or so cardboard boxes I'd taken from the storage shed to make them ready for the dump. I dragged the old broken trash can on wheels where I'd stored my winter clothes in plastic bags out of the storage shed (AKA the adobe) and lugged the better quality non-broken one that lived on the back patio up to the abode in its place. I put the pair of Timberland boots I wore once in 2002 that belonged to Paul, who died in 2001, with the flattened boxes to go to the dump. I asked the current handyman-in-residence if he had any interest in the four boxes of weirdly shaped saltillo tiles left over from redoing the living room floor in 2002. I put gloves on, closed my eyes, and swept into the cobwebs in each corner of the adobe - in short (too late) made a really good first pass at cleaning it out, something I've wanted to do for about five years.
I'd definitely earned my bowl o'carbs, and broke up the angel hair into thirds, forgot that it could be sauteed in olive oil, and put some water in the pot with it to start it boiling. Slowly added more water and clam juice, had it simmering away nicely. Remembered I had bought frozen spinach that morning and decided to cook some to go with the pasta. Did not want to dirty another pot. With Jupiter (optimism) telling me throwing (Mars - action) the bag of frozen spinach into the pot of boiling water and pasta would work out, I did just that, put the lid back on, turned the heat down a bit and left it alone for five minutes or so. Took the lid off, stirred it all up, added a can of Progresso White Clam Sauce and voila! my first astrologically influenced recipe. It was good.
10 December, 2012
Jupiter Conjunct Uranus, continued
Exact today in a couple of hours, preceded by Jupiter squaring Mars, combined with Mars square the Sun at 10:00 am, Sun square Jupiter just after T Jupiter hits Uranus, and Saturn square Pluto in a couple of days.
Mix all of that up and what do you get - me deciding to have maintenance done on the house, attempting to balance my checkbook - (I know - how quaint is that?), wondering just how long it's going to take the man painting the front steps that were rebuilt last week for only $850 to finish, trying to work out what I'll owe him for the day, hoping he can start and finish painting the well house tomorrow so if the car port people call they can come on Wednesday to put it up, logging in to Emigrant Direct yet again to transfer money for the third day in a row and trying to be very grateful that I have the funds to be able to do what I'm doing.
I could of course paint the front steps and the well house myself, and fully intended to do so, except I've known the well house needed painting since June and I haven't touched it; when I did repaint it myself several years ago all I did was scrape the paint off the lower third of the walls where it was flaking and paint over that bit, not touching the upper two-thirds of the walls (and completely ignoring the east side of it that you can't see from the house).
Knowing that, I knew what kind of job I'd do on the front steps, and when a friend handed me a piece of paper with the name of a reasonably priced handyman looking for work on it, it seemed only reasonable to give him a call and have him start the next day, yesterday, Sunday. God forbid I should give up my Jupiterian (?) freedom to read the Daily Mail and tie myself down to the drudgery of a paint job.
All those man-hours add up though, and rather than benefitting from sudden windfalls I seem to be - cue Saturn squaring Pluto in four, thank you very much - doing the exact opposite and handing out fistfuls of dollars as fast as I can get them transferred from savings to checking.
Looking on the bright side, I have managed to refinance - a boring form of windfall but a windfall just the same as it will save me a chunk of change every month. I haven't done it with pencil and paper yet but a quick in my head calculation tells me the next three years' worth of savings have gone already, and the car port guys haven't even called yet.
Mix all of that up and what do you get - me deciding to have maintenance done on the house, attempting to balance my checkbook - (I know - how quaint is that?), wondering just how long it's going to take the man painting the front steps that were rebuilt last week for only $850 to finish, trying to work out what I'll owe him for the day, hoping he can start and finish painting the well house tomorrow so if the car port people call they can come on Wednesday to put it up, logging in to Emigrant Direct yet again to transfer money for the third day in a row and trying to be very grateful that I have the funds to be able to do what I'm doing.
I could of course paint the front steps and the well house myself, and fully intended to do so, except I've known the well house needed painting since June and I haven't touched it; when I did repaint it myself several years ago all I did was scrape the paint off the lower third of the walls where it was flaking and paint over that bit, not touching the upper two-thirds of the walls (and completely ignoring the east side of it that you can't see from the house).
Knowing that, I knew what kind of job I'd do on the front steps, and when a friend handed me a piece of paper with the name of a reasonably priced handyman looking for work on it, it seemed only reasonable to give him a call and have him start the next day, yesterday, Sunday. God forbid I should give up my Jupiterian (?) freedom to read the Daily Mail and tie myself down to the drudgery of a paint job.
All those man-hours add up though, and rather than benefitting from sudden windfalls I seem to be - cue Saturn squaring Pluto in four, thank you very much - doing the exact opposite and handing out fistfuls of dollars as fast as I can get them transferred from savings to checking.
Looking on the bright side, I have managed to refinance - a boring form of windfall but a windfall just the same as it will save me a chunk of change every month. I haven't done it with pencil and paper yet but a quick in my head calculation tells me the next three years' worth of savings have gone already, and the car port guys haven't even called yet.
08 December, 2012
Jupiter Conjunct Uranus
Well, I'm posting here two days in a row - THAT'S a surprise ha ha. This aspect happened earlier in the year at the end of July, when I was silly enough to go to Vegas and expect to win money.
I went to Vegas all right, and thanks to my traveling companion's former life-style got to stay at the Venetian for three days for nothing (yeah, right), and then as soon as I returned, coming back from the dealer with a new spare tire, smashed up my poor old Volvo as Jupiter squared Mars and I made a wide turn onto the dirt road where I live, straight into the pick-up that was making a left turn out.
So - with two days to go until Jupiter conjuncts Uranus - the only sudden windfall in sight is the refinancing of #14, which, if I can find my Social Security Benefit Letter and it actually happens, will save me $250 a month in mortgage payments - in effect giving me a *free* car loan and *free* storage costs on the contents of my New York apartment which is making itself (are making themselves?) very comfortable in a five by ten (or is it ten by fifteen) space in Public Storage in Randolph, Mass. (Don't ask.)
Was it Jupiter square Mars that gave me the impetus to call Bank of America to see if they would indeed help me Make my Home Affordable? I have no idea, and no time to ponder the question, as I have to take a couple of bags of never-wear-it clothing to PAWS thrift shop and get another sudden windfall in disguise in the form of a donation receipt.
I went to Vegas all right, and thanks to my traveling companion's former life-style got to stay at the Venetian for three days for nothing (yeah, right), and then as soon as I returned, coming back from the dealer with a new spare tire, smashed up my poor old Volvo as Jupiter squared Mars and I made a wide turn onto the dirt road where I live, straight into the pick-up that was making a left turn out.
So - with two days to go until Jupiter conjuncts Uranus - the only sudden windfall in sight is the refinancing of #14, which, if I can find my Social Security Benefit Letter and it actually happens, will save me $250 a month in mortgage payments - in effect giving me a *free* car loan and *free* storage costs on the contents of my New York apartment which is making itself (are making themselves?) very comfortable in a five by ten (or is it ten by fifteen) space in Public Storage in Randolph, Mass. (Don't ask.)
Was it Jupiter square Mars that gave me the impetus to call Bank of America to see if they would indeed help me Make my Home Affordable? I have no idea, and no time to ponder the question, as I have to take a couple of bags of never-wear-it clothing to PAWS thrift shop and get another sudden windfall in disguise in the form of a donation receipt.
07 December, 2012
Jupiter Square Mars
So forget about Sun opposed to Uranus on Saturday when I asked a perfect stranger to join in the game of UpWords I was playing with B (we were in a coffee shop - even I didn't go out on the street and drag him in) and we had a horrible stilted serious game instead of the easy back and forth one we usually have - forget that and let's focus on Jupiter square Mars that I didn't even realize was happening because I'm so focused on Jupiter about to conjunct Uranus I forgot I have a natal Mars/Uranus square.
Now, of course, three days after writing and not posting the above, I've completely lost interest in the whole thing, and can just about summon up the energy to write that on the day J square M perfected, I decided I would bite the bullet and treat myself to a flat screen TV, only to have my credit card rejected by CitiBank, ever vigilant in their quest to prevent me from fraud since my card was hacked twice in a year by, as well as preventing the TV transaction from going through, refusing to let me pump gas in Arizona when I dared to leave New Mexico without alerting them.
Now, of course, three days after writing and not posting the above, I've completely lost interest in the whole thing, and can just about summon up the energy to write that on the day J square M perfected, I decided I would bite the bullet and treat myself to a flat screen TV, only to have my credit card rejected by CitiBank, ever vigilant in their quest to prevent me from fraud since my card was hacked twice in a year by, as well as preventing the TV transaction from going through, refusing to let me pump gas in Arizona when I dared to leave New Mexico without alerting them.
01 December, 2012
Venus Trine Mars...
... and once again all I seem to have done is run around a tennis court flailing wildly at anything that comes within striking distance, losing all three sets we played but having a great time doing it.
As for Mercury sextile Jupiter, perfecting at the same time as the above, mid-afternoon yesterday, I wouldn't say my attention turned to any larger issues in my life, unless you count thinking yet again that I really do have to make a will, and, as usual, doing absolutely nothing about it except starting yet another to-do list with "Will" at the top.
As for Mercury sextile Jupiter, perfecting at the same time as the above, mid-afternoon yesterday, I wouldn't say my attention turned to any larger issues in my life, unless you count thinking yet again that I really do have to make a will, and, as usual, doing absolutely nothing about it except starting yet another to-do list with "Will" at the top.
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