Some days you just have to laugh

So I got up eager to embrace this my 3rd day in a row of Jillian Michaels exercise DVDs. It's part of my new fitness plan and I'm really committed to exercising at 11am every day. The first 2 DVDs I bought by her were super hard for me. I could follow along, but hardly do the exercises to the extent intended. The third one was the charm. Even though I clearly couldn’t do it all, hard core, it worked well enough to challenge me for now and give something to aim for. Yesterday was the Autumn equinox, and during my workout I was winded nearly to the point of feeling self-defeated. But I rallied through, reasoning that if I do this 5 days a week from now until Winter solstice, this is as out of shape as it gets and there’s only room for improvement. So I made my way through the 40 minute DVD. I felt good afterwords, we had a great day at work and I was even more encouraged and motivated to exercise before work this morning.

I'm old school when it comes to exercise, trained to not do anything crazy when my heart rate gets up into something we used to call the training zone. It meant 70-90% of your maximum heart rate capacity. The new generation says that this is an archaic fitness myth. Still, I'm quite reluctant to get my heart rate soaring and then say, go right to the mat to do ab work or suddenly stop moving at all. My enthusiasm had me really pumping it up this morning, until I went from jumping jacks straight down to the mat for, you guessed it, ab work. Bad move. My heart rhythm went so far off of the charts that I had to stop immediately, breathe and then slowly and carefully get myself up and onto my bed where I could prop myself up on pillows and re-center my heart rate and let slow it down. It's kind of scary when that happens and I'm fine now. BUT I KNOW BETTER in the first place. Love Jillian, but no more cardio/circuit straight to the mat. The mat circuit will be done after all of the standing work and my heart rate comes down a bit.

Even when lying on my pillows, feeling my heart rate stabilizing, I was proud of myself for trying to exercise today. That didn’t go so well I thought, but tomorrow I’ll try again and just change the sequence. I’m still going to have a great day I enthusiastically resolved. On the agenda? Uninstall and reinstall Adobe Dreamweaver. What was I thinking?

This was once an amazing program. I used it back in 2004 when it was owned and run by Macromedia, and it worked like a charm. It is a website design program and it worked well with Macs, something most other web design software wouldn’t work with at all. Since this past May and the last Mercury retrograde, when I downloaded Adobe’s version, it has been “The Program from Hell.” Not a session goes by without it locking up and freezing my entire brand new Mac. This Mac has tons of power, memory and free space, and has not had one single problem with any other software. And I have lots. After four months of calling Adobe’s Tech Support, usually to be told to go to their website and read complicated manuals that are undecipherable to the non-geek, I had decided to throw the baby out w the bath water and uninstall and reinstall the whole damn thing. What the Hell, right? Mercury is retrograde again. This is the ideal time to revisit and correct technical issues, right? Why waste more time trouble shooting and having those oh so special conversations with India? I backed everything up, got my serial number in order and only wanted to download Dreamweaver again, in case the errors came as a result of a corrupted file in the original download back in May.

So it takes ten years to reach someone, ok 20 minutes and seriously like another 30 minutes to download the new program file from Adobe. I do so only to find out that the moron, sorry, but, in CS sent me a Windows version of the .... software. I call back, again, for the 3rd time now, only to be informed that they’ll send me a CD of the program. That actually suits me just fine right about now. The site was just updated yesterday. My files are on both my external drive and on Yahoo’s server. And now I’ll have seven to ten working days before I deal with anymore technical nonsense. By then Mercury will be direct. I’m relatively sure that it will all be fine.

In the meantime, I’m decided to not try to accomplish anything else today. My workout gave me heart palpitations and the software won’t be here for ten days. Clearly God wants me to vegetate. So, I’ll hang out with some of my new astrology books, and be glad that they’re not on a Kindle!

Sun into Libra - Keeping Love Real

The current Mercury retrograde cycle is sure to go down as one of the most entertaining in recent memory. South Carolina Congressman Joe Wilson kicked off the season of gaffs and laughs with his now famous, “You lie!” outburst during President Obama’s health care address to Congress. A few days later at the U.S. Open, tennis icon Serena Williams expressed her displeasure with a line judge’s call by shouting, "If I could, I would take this ... ball and shove it down your ... throat." The very next day Kanye West got into the act at the MTV Music Video Awards by butting into Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech, only to be inadvertently admonished on the following day by none other than President Obama, who mistakenly thinking that his comments were not being recorded, referred to the rapper as “a jackass.” And we won’t even start on the mischief Mercury is merrily making with the ACORN federally funded housing for prostitutes and pimps debacle. If you never quite understood why this planet is the famed Trickster of the zodiac, now you know.





Diplomatic, impeccably mannered Libra comes to town on September 22nd when the Sun enters the sign of relating and balance at 2:19pm PST. Ruled by the planet of beauty, Venus, the sign regaled for its tact and decorum will likely put a stop to the unwitting lip slippage, especially after the 29th when Mercury goes direct. Libra’s aim after all, is to see things from all points of view, to weigh them carefully and to then act harmoniously in the cause of peacemaking. Rude behavior of any sort is simply unacceptable to Libra sensibilities. In 2009, the Sun, Mercury’s entry into the sign of the scales on October 9th and Venus’s on the 14th will aid Libra’s lofty mission. We will be given the chance to think about and move towards our desires through Libra’s loving and laudable perspective. While we know the inherent truth and wisdom of parables such as love thy neighbor as thyself, walk a mile in another man’s shoes, and whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, even so do ye also unto them, like no other sign, Libra challenges us to walk their walk. That’s because by its very definition it must relate to other, what or whoever that other is. So before us is an ideal opportunity to try on unfamiliar opinions and to try to see the things we believe in the most through the opposite point of view. The awareness gained from doing so can be transformative.

What’s so funny about peace, love and understanding? Namely Pluto set to square the Sun on September 23rd, Mercury on October 10th, Venus on the 15th and Saturn on the 29th. In an effort to please everyone and maintain a semblance of serenity, Libra can sacrifice its true feelings, compromise its core values or become indecisive to a debilitating degree. Pluto, 90 degrees away from Libra in matter of fact Capricorn, will keep the peace and love fest real. The energies of the Sun, Mercury and Venus squares with Pluto are a good precursor to the building Saturn square to Pluto. That Square will last until August of 2010 while Saturn’s overall journey through Libra will last until October 5, 2012.



These first three alignments, involving the personal planets, will give us a glimpse into the places in our lives where being pleasant is at odds with our true beliefs in matters. They ask us to negotiate and reconcile the distance between the two, and now is the time to get some mediation practice in. Learning how to honestly and constructively balance our conflicts and contradictions will prove to be an immensely valuable tool for the Saturn Pluto Square and long Saturn in Libra cycles ahead. Venus ruled Libra injects an (overdue) air of civility into our internal, personal, national and international debates. When personal or political arguments arise, we can try take the opposing view to see if a new insight is gleaned that helps the situation or our understanding of it. The Libra caveat simply insists that peace cannot come a the expense of what we hold sacred. So, contradictory as it sounds, we will have to fight for what we believe in. What can make the critical difference is how we fight. When upsetting the apple cart seems uncomfortable and un-Libran, it may be helpful to remember that this is also a cardinal sign which means that its true nature is aggressive, agitating and instigative. Two of the best examples of Libra’s ability to both disrupt the status quo and strive for a higher good for the majority are Libra natives John Lennon and Mahatma Ghandi. The seemingly incongruous and conflicting aspects of our lives and world must be confronted, integrated and balanced, like Libra’s symbolic scales.

Other points of interest along this year’s Libra solar journey are the full moon in Aries on October 4th, harmonious solar trines to Jupiter on the 10th and Neptune on the 16th and a new Libra moon on the 18th. If you want to learn how to harness and apply the energies of Libra, the upcoming Saturn Square to Pluto or Saturn’s transit through Libra to your life, have a reading with one of the professional astrologers at 12Listen.com. Julia Stonestreet Smith. C.A. Brooks, and Neil D. Paris can read a chart like nobody’s business. But an article about the Sun through Libra would not be complete without huge Happy Birthday wishes to Jungian Astrologer and 12Listen bedrock John Joseph, who is also available for readings. Sharing the Libra birthday limelight is Louise Hay, the woman who has changed so many of our lives in profound and countless ways. Happy Birthday Louise! On that note, remember to tune into Hay House Radio every Tuesday morning at 9:30 PST to get the latest on astrological conditions on Mark Husson’s Power Peek Hour - which will actually be going back to an hour long show beginning in October!