advise

So the job search continues. Yes, I am currently employed but this job ends in mid July, which means unless I want to go on unemployment I need to get my ass in gear and get me some job prospects. Bad market for someone looking to change career paths, right? Yeah, well that's me. A master of timing. There are two recent postings which look decent. One is an academic advising position and the other is an office coordinator position. Pros and cons? Of course, for both. My pros and cons even have pros and cons. I am Libra, hear me deliberate!

Advising is what I'm doing now and I like it, a lot. This is what I've always done. Whether or not it was warranted or desired, I give advice quite freely. On the up side, I've learned to avoid speculation when giving advice. Short of gagging myself in the presence of someone discussing a problem or challenge, this seems to be the best strategy to accommodate my need to let loose with a stream of "helpful" suggestions while (hopefully) avoiding the pitfall of spewing a load of crap. Speculating is what I call it when someone doesn't have any hard empirical evidence or explicit knowledge of a thing but continues speaking as if he or she does. To me, this is a cardinal sin, and really damned annoying. The speaker who finds him or herself in such a context should at least have the good grace to say "Well I don't know for sure but based on A (b, and c), I think X", where A (b, and c) are spelling out at least minimally. This allows the listener to know how to rank the particular advice being given. I've given this much thought. How much? Most of my late twenties in fact. I went through this big communication crisis in my late twenties, which I chalk up rather superstitiously to being part of my Saturn return, and which made me a very difficult person to talk to during the time. But I'm clear of it now and I do believe I've learned some useful lessons so in the final accounting, including how to temper my need to advise with some acknowledgment of the limits of my experience, so this is a good thing I suppose.

But back to the jobs and deliberating about which one I should pin my hopes and wishes to, at least until the next round of searching comes along. The one job is advising. It's full time and if it is not flexible time then I'm screwed. Moreover, it is at an institution with a religious affiliation. Not great. However, it's my sense that religiously affiliated institutions may have more respect for needs like caring for family (i.e. my brother) and an institutional understanding that, well, shit happens in life. I am hopeful that I'll be less likely to encounter that wretched secular Calvinism which marks so many professional cultures in the U.S. if I work for a catholic institution, but my distrust of organized religion is so strong that even typing that last phrase gives me a small internal shudder.

The other job is office coordinating. This one is a part time, 35 hour a week position. Pros? Less committed time for work, less responsibility (hopefully). Cons? Less money, less responsibility (yes, it's a pro and a con), and more of that low man on the totem pole shit. There's a tendency in academic culture to treat administrative support staff like crap, which can manifest as explicitly shitty behavior or as seemingly benevolent but ultimately condescending attitude, and god knows I don't deal gracefully with either.

The list of pro and con goes on, but I don't feel the need to put all two of my blog readers through the full, winding process - especially since with this job market it could end up I don't even get an interview for either position. I'll be sending resumes for both today, so wish me luck.

galaxy

From Wikipedia:
A very remarkable planetary/galactic configuration occurs on December 23rd and 24th 2007. The configuration on December 23 — Mars, Earth, Sun, Mercury, Jupiter, Galactic Centre — is shown in the graphic simulation linked below (here); it becomes even more remarkable in that it will be accompanied by the Full Moon (conjunct Mars) at about 2 a.m. on December 24 when a simultaneous Venus square Neptune occurs. It is even more remarkable in that the Pluto/Sun conjunction appears exactly on the Winter Solstice, just past conjunction with the Galactic Centre.

Off by about three months

Yep, that sounds right. Except the preppy (and put together) part.

You Should Be A Capricorn

What's good about you: hard working and ambitious, you're practically a guaranteed success What's bad about you: you can be unforgiving toward people who fail you In love: you're very picky, but extremely devoted to the one you choose In friendship, you're: likely to be a good friend but expect a lot in return Your ideal job: rock climber, sculptor, or practitioner of black magic Your sense of fashion: preppy and put together You like to pig out on: meat and potatoes

What Sign Should You Be?

My debatable status as a libra

The year I was born, it was a late Libra year. The sun was not even 24 hours into Libra when I came on the scene. So am I a Virgo or a Libra? Not to sound like "a flippin' astro-star-gazin' tripped princess-pot-head" (to quote Daniela, who has a tendency to put it exactly right) but here I go (sounding like a FASGTPPH, complete with chart and mugs!)


As a kid, I'd get those astrology gifts...you know, mugs and shit that have the "you're a libra!" announcement written in scrolly gold letters over a list of traits (always good of course) that erode quickly even in the days before dishwashers. It was the 70s, remember?

And I'd read them looking for some sense of self definition, you know, like a kid does. Or is that just me? Anyhow, I was chronically disappointed, left thinking I wasn't a very good Libra. Diplomatic? Ah, no. Charming? Definitely not. Unreasonably attractive? No. Possibly still, but definitely then, I was one of those kind of odd looking people who had too long a face, pale skin, sunken eyes with dark circles under them, no or strange at best fashion sense, and a tendency to openly visually inspect people in a way that was disconcerting and uncomfortable. I thought of myself as a sullen peevish person prone to fits of unreasonable outbursts of anger. Combine that with my pallid unsmiley and slightly creepy countenance and you get something that is far from the coffee mug's insistence that I be a curvacious, cuddly, and cute being who need only smile and twirl her fashionably coiffed locks to have people falling all over themselves to please her.

Rather than question the authority of dimestore coffee mugs and key chains, instead I developed this theory that I was a Libra imposter.

When I got older, I actually looked things up....got an emphemeris and shit. Turns out I am barely a Libra sunsign-wise. To further muddy the water, it turns out that by one account, I am a Libra with Libra rising. Given the excessive cuspiness of my time and day of birth, I have tended to assume (when such assumptions are motivated) that I am either a Virgo with Libra rising or a Virgo flavored Libra with Scorpio rising (my rising sign is also on an edge, given the time of day I was born).

Of course, there is the whole astrology is a load of shit theory too. I realize that I am a skeptic, really I am. But I am also a pragmatist and I find any one way of categorizing and describing personality about as useful and "true" as another. So whether it's a coffee mug, a key chain, any of the various "type" surveys, or the DSM whatever, there will always be stuff like illusory cause kicking around the edges. Therefore, to me, they all have about as much functionality and applicability as the proverbial (and enormous) grain of salt allows. Which isn't to say none, but it certainly isn't something I'd set my watch by (how d'you like that mix of metaphors? Perhaps we should add lack of rhetorical skill to the "not a Libra" list).

And without further ado, here are a few of my Virgo traits that are completely not in accordance with the coffee mug prescriptive astrological characteristics of a Libra:
- I compulsively clean, we're talking mops and dust rags and shit. The night before my wedding, my friends had to stage an intervention to get me to stop cleaning the bathroom (which I had innocently started doing while washing up for bed).
- I can't abide squishily made plans. I don't need an iron clad itinerary but I need structure.
- I think the phrase "it's all good" when used to explain someone's flakiness and carelessness with my time is damned near criminal and on a bad day it makes me want to smack (the shit out of) the person who uttered it.
- I have a tendency to think that if I do something well, it should be simple enough for everyone to just do it that way....because that way is so obviously the best way of doing it for the situation.
- A quick wit is incredibly attractive to me. Much more so than a dazzling intellect that cannot be articulated or a moron wrapped in a pretty package. In high school, when the boy I had lusted after from afar for three years finally asked me out, he was just so fucking stupid I couldn't bring myself to actually fuck him. His discourse on the matter turned me off so thoroughly that I couldn't even make out with him afterwards and I ended up calling it an early night. That evening should have been, by all accounts, my total dream date. Valentine's day, we went to a dance club on an all ages night, I looked good (in a 1980s kind of way), I got to be seen in public by lots of people with this cute guy, and he had even asked me (in advance) to the junior prom. But he was such a fucking IDIOT that I lost it. (btw, a dollar to whoever can come up with a good term for this...something like whiskey dick but, well, as it applies to losing all semblance of sexual arousal based on the realization that the person with whom you are tangled in a steamy teenaged lust level embrace is a fool of the most stunning and unappealing proportions).

squished

I had been writing a post when poof, I lost power. It's back on again, but who knows for how long. If I were a lesser person, this would be really trying my patience.

Hey, wait, it is trying my patience. I guess I'm lesser.

Poor A___. He came over before we were planning to head up to campus only to find me nowhere near ready to go, stomping from room to room inspecting the leaks, and pondering whether or not I should move my bed. My mood was not swell, and possibly the resulting argument was unavoidable. I want to believe there is a good way to deal with me when I get like this, but I often suspect there isn't.

Moving anything, even contemplating moving or doing anything that involves physical strain, puts me in a foul mood. I'm not a large person and was never terribly strong. Now that I have whatever it is I have, it's just that much harder. So I'm here pondering moving shit, which would involve asking him to move it for me mostly, and thinking that I don't want to be so dependent, and thinking that if I weren't so freaked out about dependency and independence we probably could have moved in together when A___'s lease was up, which would allow us to afford to live somewhere that doesn't feature gaping moldy holes in the ceiling.

But I am very reluctant to move in with him. The reluctance alone is enough to make me think I shouldn't. I worry I'll sabotage the relationship out of fear and insecurity. Since that is the case and since there are so few decent and affordable single apartments around here, I remain in this one. But this is a catch 22, right? Because by remaining in this one, I continue to be dependent when one of the problems with this apartment manifests in a physical way.

While A___ was out (he went out shortly after we had a fight), I decided I could manage to move my bed by myself. I did. It's moved, however, after I moved it I realized three things.
One - The only placement where the bed fits and where it will be clear of the leaks requires that several other pieces of much heavier furniture be moved.
Two - I have hurt myself moving the bed (ow).
Three - There is yet another dark spot forming on the living room ceiling directly over where I have stacked my DVD player, VCR, and stereo. If that becomes an active leak, all of that will need to be moved as well.

Sometimes when I was younger, I would rearrange my furniture for a change of pace. It was a little tiring and sometimes sweaty work which I saved for when I was in some kind of manic cleaning/housekeeping burst. It was ultimately very satisfying to do this when I lived in larger quarters and had more energy at my disposal. This though, this is not fun and it is not satisfying. It is soggy, annoying, frustrating, and very tiring.

I have bad luck with water. That's what it comes down to. I used to joke that it is because I have a lack of water in my birth chart so water is like my kryptonite. In every single place I have lived, I've had some kind of destructive water related event.

Ann Arbor - at the end of my first month in my new apartment, my (then) fiance Bob and I woke one morning to the sound of water in our bedroom. It was pouring down the wall behind the bureau, soaking everything on and in it. Turns out the neighbors upstairs were leaving on a trip to Europe and had decided to wash everything at once in the small washing machine. This threw it off balance and resulted in the machine pulling out of the wall, with water gushing uncontrollably out of the pipe.

Ann Arbor - my last year there we moved to a house. I was in my basement office (it was very pink) working when I realized that I could hear water hitting cement in the unfinished part of the basement. I ran upstairs to find that although I had closed the window to Bob's office on account of a nasty rain storm, the water had filled up inside the window frame like dam. The dam had finally broken and a small spill off pond had formed under the window. In this pond, the power strip for my husband's computer floated, still plugged in and on. Before I could get back to the basement to turn off the power, something shorted and we lost Bob's brand new printer/scanner/fax machine.

Connecticut - within the first week of buying our house, we discovered the roof hadn't been finished properly and a retaining wall in the basement were cracked. We discovered this because during the first rain storm, water came in through both. The roof water ruined a sizable chunk of the ceiling and wall in my office that I had just finished painting.

Connecticut - One of my friends flushed the toilet in the guest bathroom and it got stuck. it ran all day, draining the well. It took several days to recover, during which time my siblings were down for a holiday. My brother refused to crap in the house since we were conserving flushes to one a day. He was so concerned that someone might see his waste that he decided he would shit in the woods. This did result in one of the most amusing moments of tormenting him I have ever had, but it did suck a whole lot too.

Connecticut - Very shortly after moving into my new apartment in 2000 (middle of separation and end of the semester), I got sick. I went to my doctor on a Friday afternoon, and he sent me straight to the hospital for an ultrasound. When I returned to my little apartment much later that night, I found a note from my insane landlady saying that the hot water heater had exploded in the basement and that I would not have r cornered me in the hallway with a barrage of questions about what I was doing earlier thatunning water for a day. She later evening since she swore she could hear water running in my apartment. She all but said I had somehow broken the heater. This woman eventually threw me out because of this and other imagined offenses (i.e. that I was running up and down the stairs pounding on the other tenants doors).

Connecticut - Various problems with the well in another apartment. It ran out, cracked, was contaminated, and the pump blew, all on different occasions. We also had a tenant whose dishwasher broke loose much like the washing machine at the first place in Ann Arbor. The tenant wasn't home and hot steaming water was flooding the basement and coming into the kitchen of her next door neighbor, Karen. Karen pounded on my door (why me?) and we spent the next few minutes in the basement while my landlord begged me by cell phone to just turn all of the faucets I could find until it stopped.

Connecticut - This place has just been chock full of water problems. Really it's the same problem. This place is like a sieve and my landlord and apartment manger are cheap bastards who have tried to get away with cheap quick fixes for too long.

So what's the upshot? The upshot is I have to find some way to make this tolerable so I'm not cranky with people like the nice sexy man I essentially just chased out of my apartment today for the crime of what, being too quiet? Jeez.

I am thinking of offering a barbie doll in ritual sacrifice to Tlaloc, the scary Aztec rain god (that's him up there on the left).

Sure, she's plastic and the Aztec gods are more the flesh and blood types, but she's a symbol of so much that is revered in our society. I think that it is fitting, plus, apparently Tlaloc likes the smell of burning rubber.

Rainfall data for my area (for yesterday):

	Actual	Normal	Record	Last Year
Precipitation	0.70 "	0.12 "	1.50 " ( 1944 )	0.00 "
Month-to-date precip.	7.02 "	3.13 "	--	1.36 "
Year-to-date precip.	27.41 "	22.06 "	--	20.16 "

(from wunderground.com)

Cosmic Time Out

I have been issued a cosmic time out. I think I knew this was coming. More details on that later. Yes, there is more than me literally screaming at a fellow student for tailgating me en route to a party. More than me shaking with rage for hours over one grad's arrogant choice of offensive lecture material. More than foolishly going to the mall the weekend after Thanksgiving. More than my brother calling me at midnight Sunday from LAX airport to tell me he has done crystal again and is breaking up with his boyfriend (again) right now, in the airport.

More than that and it can wait until later. For now, I refer you to my horoscope.
"While I don't usually recommend that you pursue this kind of escapism, Virgo, it's perfectly fine--maybe even healthy--to do so now. Please feel free to disappear from the grind for a few days. If necessary, flee into an alternate reality."

Saturnine

I find astrology interesting. Not interesting enough for me to spend lots of money on tons of books and software, trade in my cheap and functional grad student wardrobe for a closet full of Stevie Nicks goes to the renfest clothes, or adopt a personna with a mysterious name like Aelita. I consider it a form of self enlightening entertainment where the enlightenment comes from reflection and deliberation about the generalizations, characterizations, and descriptions that are made as they regard self identity and interpersonal interactions. Crucially, I do not believe much enlightenment can come from literal belief in charts, transits, or forecasts.


Saturn
From the NSSDC photo gallery

If your interest in astrology is anything more in depth than the info used for pick up lines ("hey you're a virgo? You like soap on a roap?" Ok, well maybe you won't encounter that one much. More likely it's something like "I'm a capricorn - that means I'm a goat. Heh heh."), you might have heard of something called a Saturn Return. If you have no interest in astrology, if you're thinking "Astrology? Right, like I believe that everyone's lives are dictated by planets moving around in space!" then what the fuck are you doing in my blog? Get out!

Back to the Saturn Return.
Your Saturn returns when it moves into the same position it was in when you were born. Saturn is a slow mover, so it takes about 29 years or so for it to get back to the place where you started. General cultural knowlege includes the associations of Venus with love, Mercury with travel or communication, the moon with emotion, and the sun with ego. So what's Saturn associated with?

Here's an excerpt from an introduction to the astrological influence of Saturn.
"Saturn...rules the responsibilities, restrictions and limitations we are apt to encounter, and the lessons we must learn in life...The karmic lessons we have come to experience and overcome in this lifetime are expressed by Saturn, the karmic initiator of the zodiac."

I'm quite sure the concept of the Saturn Return is a culturally relative characterization but there is some sense to it considering, as one site offers, "We live in a culture without (formal) distinct divisions between childhood and adulthood; this (Saturn Return) is a clear one" (parentheticals mine)

I guess my Saturn Return is over astrologically speaking. I have many friends who I am watching go through these difficult years. It is not easy. When I was 27, one friend quite sincerely told me that it was very difficult to be my friend. He qualified it with "right now" but it was hard to hear regardless, mostly because I absolutely knew he was right.

So how'd my Saturn Return go? I guess the things I dealt with, more or less (mostly less) gracefully and successfully these last few years have resulted in some lessons learned. In general, I think the most concrete and useful thing I have gained is a realization that my life is right here right now and not something that will start "when...". As in "when I graduate from college", "when I get into grad school", "when I get a divorce", "when I get done with grad school", "when I get a real job", "when I buy a house", when, when when. This doesn't mean I don't procrastinate anymore. But I don't get to excuse it with the tacit belief that I'm still rehearsing for the big show.

What got me thinking about Saturn tonight though was an entirely different matter. It was that I was thinking about the issue of posting images and photos on my blog and I got all sort of, well, paranoid? I found myself feeling concerned about copyright and public use and the like. You might notice some of my pix coming down or changing to links while I sort this out. I am not sure I feel that it is morally wrong for me to post things appearing in what I see as a public domain and which have perhaps less than obvious restrictions on use. I'd feel bad about posting someone else's personal work without giving them credit I suppose. And it is illegal to post copyrighted stuff, I know that. But some things don't have clear copyright info on them. I suspect that this does not matter in the legal world. If I were to scroll down or mouse over or something I'd probably find the info. I'm not using the images for profit or claiming them as my own, but then does that matter legally either? What's that saying about ignorance of the law? I think about this more though and I find myself wondering things like is posting such images against convention? Will I get caught? Should I care? The answer I've come to is that I probably should, and there is the issue. Why? Because I might get in trouble? Is that what matters most to me?

Which lead me to think "how saturnine of me", but then I thought I don't really think that is the right use of the word. It means morose and associated other stuff. So why'd it pop into my head? I guess because my recent experience with things Saturn related have had to do with cosmic spankings. This has apparently infected my knowledge of the word's relatives, usurping the existing definitions of those cognates. I wonder if the great Morris Halle has a rule for this process?

I find some validation of my lexical reflex in the two definitions below. That is, taken together and with a richer understanding of the influence of Saturn in the context of astrology, I suppose maybe this word is not inaccurate for my thought process regarding posting images.

One definition reads:
"Pertaining to the planet Saturn (archaic); born under the influence of Saturn, hence gloomy, grumpy, sour, and with a sarcastic attitude."
Another, from an astrology site, adds the word has "...a meaning borrowed wholly from Astrology, which defines it as one who has a strong Saturn accent."

So, saturnine. Used to describe one who spends too much time wondering about the roles that social convention and legal definition play in one's principles and personal conduct.

Mercury Retrograde

So this is shaping up to be another delightful week. It's revoltingly hot and humid here in southern New England. The carpet in my apartment is sticky and stinks from the cat who belonged to the prior tenant. My toilet is still broken. The maintenance guy came today, looked at it, said "yep, the seal's broken. I'll get another one and some bolts and come back...how's early next week sound?" This even though I said "the seal is broken" when I called. But what do I know, I'm just a girl, right?

I came in to work today, and as I was entering the building, the fire alarm started. So instead of a frosty blast of welcoming a.c. that I had been dearly looking forward to, I sat outside in the heat with too many bodies around me. One of the office staffers told me mercury is going retrograde. Not keeping up on the astrology these days, but hey, with all the broken things around me (technological as well as personal) I could have guessed as much.

Speaking of broken things - T and I are officially broken up. I think he doesn't entirely realize this yet, but that is only because he is busy finishing his dissertation draft and won't wake up and smell the coffee until he has reached something of a stopping point. I could go out of my way to make it abundantly clear to him right now, but his obstinate ignorance and blindness seem to be protective mechanisms that he apparently needs. I don't know what is coming on that front, how the "talk" we will have when he's done with his draft will go, but I do know that our romantic relationship is over. Once he can be engaged enough to face it with understanding or even possibly relief, then I guess it's his turn in the tea room. He has spent most of his time and energy avoiding that place. While it is not always comfortable, it is necessary to be there sometimes. Otherwise, the challenges that life throws at us are simply miserable rough spots that do nothing except bring us down. If we are able to use them to gain insights into our attitudes about and relationships with people and aspects of our lives, then these times are not all and only bad.

I can't imagine opting for the all bad choice myself. Then it's just pointless sorrow, anger, insecurity, hardship, and pain that I am enduring. I've had a bit too much of that starting at a rather young age. (This is not a sympathy kick here, only background.) If I only ever looked at these periods as horrible, I think I'd have given up long ago. I do realize from my own and others' experiences that there are times when we can't reflect on the misery that the hard parts of life create because we're right in the thick of it and must plow on to survive. But those times are the genuinely horrible periods brought on by things like coming to terms with a chronic life-sucking illness, the death of a dearly loved one, disaster, and other truly catastrophic upheavals. Late 20s growing pains - dealing with the parental conflicts an adult identity uncovers, the personal shortcomings that are suddenly and undeniably illuminated, this is not one of those truly horrible events that gets in the way of living life. It's just life.

He had a solid and affectionate relationship with a very competent woman (me) to help him through the late 20s growing pains and other shit life's thrown his way. He had a family that at least has money and who don't all drive him nuts, and most importantly, he had friends. Through his hiding under the covers reactions to the growing up challenges that have come along in the last few years, he has jeopardized some of these things. I am one of them. All I needed was to know that we were in this together, not that I was going to be pushed into some quasi-parental role or pushed aside so he could stay firmy under his blanket.

It is pretty sad. I hope he's ok in the tea room, but I can't grow up for him and I refuse to enable what is essentially continued immaturity at the expense of my personal and professional development, my self respect, and my heart.