OODLs (Observations on Daily Life)

Our electricity went out just before 1:00 this morning. When the alarm woke me from a light doze at 5:30 AM, power still hadn't been restored. I woke up sleep-deprived, grumpy, and thinking of everything no power meant for my morning: A workout in the dark with no Grace & Frankie to distract me from the fact I had voluntarily left my bed before dawn to torture myself with cardio. No daylight lamp to give me the wakeup (and mood) boost I desperately needed. A seriously cold shower after my workout. No tea (read: no caffeine) with breakfast. T.G.I.F.  On the bright side, I could still meditate. The thought of enjoying those few moments of undisturbed silence cheered me up quite a bit. As I settled in for my morning meditation, the power surges started. And they didn't stop. This caused our battery backups to beep incessantly. I grumbled. Then I smiled. To put it delicately, my morning had been shot all to hell. Nothing had gone according to plan. The routines I depend on for ...

Poor Mercury. It seems like every time there is a communication or technology foul-up, or whenever people are just acting weird, the planet closest to the sun is the prime suspect. If a quick check of the website  www.ismercuryinretrograde.com  yields a positive response, that cinches it. Mercury is responsible. And when Mercury is retrograde, there's nothing you can do but sit back and ride it out. Brief astrology (and astronomy) lesson: Whenever a planet goes retrograde (some say "in retrograde," but this is grammatically incorrect) it appears to move backward across the sky. All planets go retrograde from time to time. They aren't actually moving backward - it just looks like they are because of how their orbit around the sun looks to us here on Earth. Astrologically speaking, the planet Mercury is thought to control communication. In mythology, the god Mercury was a messenger (he was known as Hermes to the Greeks...and he was a trickster to boot.) T...