When Mercury Goes Retrograde

Mercury stands atop the Royal Palace in Amsterdam, NL

…ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE!

Three to 4 times every year and for approximately 3 weeks at a time, planet Mercury goes retrograde.  That is, it slows down in its orbit around the Sun.  The dates for this year, 2012, are:

March 12 – April 4
July 14 – August 8
November 6 – November 26

Yup, we’re smack-dab in the middle of a Mercury Retrograde (MR) and have almost 2 more weeks to go.  So what?!

Mercury, that mythological Messenger of the Gods, happens to “rule” everything related to communication and transportation, that’s what!  Perception, language, writing, editing, research, speaking, learning, the assessment of data, telecommunications, computing, software, electronic gadgets, cameras(!), the postal service, shipping, couriers, wires, cables, machines with moving parts.

When Mercury retrogrades, it scrambles information and causes static and confusion…which is why it’s not a good time to sign contracts, complete important transactions, make big decisions or purchases, especially electronics (if you don’t want a lemon!).

Everyone in the whole wide world can be affected when Mercury retrogrades but especially Gemini (moi) and Virgos (my wife) who are astrologically “ruled” by the rascal.  Astrid and I always laugh a bit nervously when these times come around because we know we need to PAS OP! (= Pay Attention!).  When we’re driving anywhere, we expect delays/detours and are pleasantly surprised when they don’t happen.  We write everything down to make sure we don’t forget anything.

Once I sheepishly told my preacher dad about MR, not knowing if he’d pooh-pooh me into the ground.  He started laughing and said, “Oh, you mean that’s what happened when Mom and I drove home from Virginia the other day and I had forgotten where I put my glasses!  The next day I found them in the corner of the luggage rack on top of the car!”  Bingo.  Lucky for him, they never fell off during the entire drive to Michigan!

Stupid, crazy, silly, frustrating, befuddling, infuriating, aggravating things happen during MR.  You forget where you put things.  You buy something you regret.  You can’t find the right words to say or write.  Before auto-save happened on the computer, you’d lose whole documents.  [Remember the Jesus Saves computer joke!]  Sometimes you lose your whole computer!  Or your camera falls into the lake.  Or you copy people in e-mails you didn’t mean to.  You press Send before you intend, you lose your comment on FB…. 

Yada Yada Yada.  Been there, done that.

But here’s the GOOD NEWS:  MR is the best time in the world to finish things you’ve already started, so all is not lost!  The closet you started cleaning out, the book you were reading/writing, the trip you were planning, the knitting project, the garden….  When Mercury slows down (like now!), it’s the perfect time to tie up those loose ends.  In fact, Mercury will help you finish them.  He needs calming down himself and would like nothing better than for all of us to just slow down a bit.

Why would the Universe give us Mercury retrograde? Because to move forward it is sometimes necessary to backtrack and reconfigure our paths in life. It is important to reconsider, repair, reflect, and reconnect. Mercury forces us to slow down and fix what's broken, and in so doing, rethink things.  It also gives us time to get to projects we have put on the back-burner.—Susan Miller

Give yourself permission.  You know you want to.  Breathe in, breathe out.

For those of you still rolling your eyes, I bet you believe in the effects of the full moon, right?  I rest my case.

She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain

But will she be wearing pink pajamas when she comes?  That's the question!

Planes, trains or automobiles...(might as well add cruise ships).  When you travel, what is your preference, especially during the summer vacation?  Astrid and I have just returned from a week's drive to SW France (1960 miles) to visit some Dutch friends who moved there...and then to do some sight-seeing along the western and northern coasts the long way home.  [Dare I mention we totally bypassed Paris on the way going, close enough to taste her!]

Back when I was moving myself lock, stock and barrel from America to The Netherlands, I went back-n-forth I don't know how many times on whether or not to ship my 2003 Honda Civic Hybrid (all paid for) or to sell her and use the money to buy a car here.  It would have cost $1000 to ship her to Rotterdam (and who knows what else to release her from the dock!).  Much cheaper than buying a new car.  However, there were too many if's and but's...about Dutch specs, regulations, etc., etc.

So, long story short, I sold the car in Atlanta and used the money to buy a brand new 2010 Daihatsu Cuore, lime green, which we now affectionally call Granny Towanda.  Granny as in Granny Smith apple green and Towanda as in Fried Green Tomatoes.  That little lady sure knows what she's doing, I tell you.  And with The Netherlands being a small country (compared to America), it's nothing to hop in the car and  discover nooks and crannies even Astrid has never seen after her 50-something years here.

The two other times I went to France were by airplane (I'm not counting all the transfers from Amsterdam to Paris to Atlanta).  Then we took the taxi or the train into the 'Cig Bity.'  To have the luxury of our own car now, taking our own time to see as much as possible in one week, was like heaven on earth.  To stop when we wanted to, to choose Bed & Breakfasts, to change course midstream...all possible when traveling by car.

The above train, BTW, is an HO scale model train from the Steam Festival we attended in nearby Dordrecht in May.  Trains totally fascinate me.  European trains in particular are total no-brainers in many situations.  "Leave the driving to someone else" makes a lot of sense sometimes.  You get to relax and see something outside the window other than clouds.  Definitely a fun way to see the countryside.

But then, of course, sometimes all you want to do is just get there.  NOW.  I do NOT want to drive the car back to America or take the train, if I could.  A cruise ship wouldn't be so bad, even without port-o-calls.  That would be one heckuva 'at sea' journey, but with a couple of good books, I wouldn't mind it a bit.  It might cost more than I wanted...so I'd check out the price of a freighter.  I rode a freighter once from New Orleans to Lima, Peru, through the Panama Canal...only 16 passengers.  Now that was fun.  Ten days of endless ocean...followed by wobbly sea-legs a few days after.  I was young and crazy but I'd do it again.

A bit of a ramble never hurt anyone, as far as I'm concerned.  Don't forget walking, of course.  Or biking.  Astrid and I rode our bikes 20 minutes the other night to a café for supper.  A bit slower than 6 white horses but it burned more calories.  However, who's counting...and who's wearing pink pajamas, right?

It's a Small World After All

This week, Thursday, Astrid and I fly [faster than a tricycle without pedals!] to Liverpool from Amsterdam for a 5-day honeymoon.  We will be staying with Tracy, a fellow Shutterchancer (SC) whom we met 3 years ago and whom we call the 3rd Musketeer.  On Saturday morning we will meet up with the Three Stooges, 3 SC fellas (all from the UK) we have grown close to over the years:  Bill, Chris and Chad.  Astrid has already met them.  On Saturday afternoon we will then meet up with many other SCers from all over who will get together just for the halibut...most of whom have never yet met each other.

This has got me thinking about our virtual communities and the amount of time we spend with each other on our blogs, reading and commenting back-n-forth.  A virtual friend I recently met through this community, V&V, told me that sometimes these virtual friendships are more real than...reality.  I had to stop and think about that!  She may be right:  I spend more time with some of you than my friends from Atlanta (now that I'm on the other side of the Pond).  On SC I joke around with friends I've never met but whose sentences I can finish.

Our children and grandchildren are growing up in a world where this is the ho-hum norm.  While we all know of the "freak accidents" of the Internet world, sometimes with costly invasions of our privacy, we still bare our souls to each other, perhaps in ways we have never previously done.  If we actually meet in real life, a friendship can be truly cemented...for life.

Already in the young world of V&V I am starting to feel "connected."  Based on my blogging experience thus far, I'm guessing I'll eventually even meet some of you.  It's such a small world after all!  And Petra, a fellow collaborator here on V&V, is only 30 km away!  Sounds like a no-brainer, right?

And now that I think of it, Astrid and I met in 2007  through our SC photoblog community while commenting on each other's posts.  Three months later we had the chance to actually meet while I was in the Netherlands and then started doing photo hunts together.  Almost 3 years later, I moved to Holland where we are now wife and wife...getting ready to go on our honeymoon.

It's a small world after all!  I'm humming the tune of the Disneyland ride I have taken so many times, reminded of the "children of the world, frolicking in a spirit of international unity, and singing the ride's title track, which has a theme of global peace."

It's a world of laughter,
A world of tears.
It's a world of hopes,
And a world of fears.
There's so much that we share,
That it's time we're aware,
It's a small world after all.

There is just one moon,
And one golden sun.
And a smile means,
Friendship to every one.
Though the mountains divide,
And the oceans are wide,
It's a small world after all.

--By Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman

I would say that just about says it all!