In a word: Retrograde
About.com: Mercury Retrograde Dates for 2011
March 30th to April 23rd: Mercury in cardinal Aries. Refresh old ideas in time for Spring. A time to be brave, and confront others, if this is a loose end. Universe creates serendipity, via opportunities to speak courageously. Here we face the fear of expressing what might rouse others to anger.
It's a break from agreeing, or saying everything is fine, when its not. It's risking being authentic, when you know it's provocative. It's feeling lit up with passion, and allowing that to be a force that works on others. It's dealing with blowback from being forceful about your opinion. It's daring to face those who have been in positions of authority. It's being excited about new ideas, some that might have been threads of inspiration for you all along.
Rx periods can cause delays, frustrations, mix-ups. Watch out for hair-trigger tempers, raging and ranting, blowing a fuse. Deep breathing and physical activity helps blow off pent up intensity.
It's only one day in, and this Mercury retrograde is already living down to its reputation.
First, LiveJournal was misbehaving. True, it had a perfectly good explanation-- LJ was the subject of a DDos attack--but so did the disruption of transatlantic flights last year because of an eruption in Iceland. That also happened during a Mercury retrograde.
Second, I got lost twice today. The first time was when I was trying to get to my car to retrieve some papers. I ended up at the opposite corner of the parking structure and had to figure out where I really was. I ended up being late to introduce the speaker. As for the papers I pulled out, one of them was for the wrong time, which means I didn't pull it out at the right time, either. That's two miscommunications in addition to being lost and late. The second happened when I took the speaker back to his hotel. Because of a misunderstanding of directions, I ended up taking the wrong offramp and going around in circles before I delivered him to his destination.
Then, I couldn't call home. My home phone would ring, but when my wife picked it up, she would get a dial tone instead of hearing me. We had to reset the modem and wait an hour for phone service to come back.
On top of all this, I'm having trouble getting access to a Google document.
Yeah, I'm a scientist and I know that's entirely likely that it's all a coincidence or self-fulfilling prophesy, or I was just having a bad day, but it is weird. On the other hand, Mercury retrograde makes for a convenient excuse. As I tell my students, my official position is that astrology is bunk, but it's fun bunk and generally harmless besides. Originally crossposted to neonvincent on Dreamwidth. Comment here or there, whichever you prefer. http://neonvincent.dreamwidth.org/12147.html