by Kris Neri
For those of you who are into astrology...mercury will be coming out of retrograde in a few days.Back when I was younger and more of a skeptic, I considered all this doomsday talk about Mercury retrogrades to be pure hooey. The trouble was that even if I didn’t believe in it, my electronics and appliances did. If my appliances were going to break, they did it then. If my electronics were going to burp, those burps also came during retrograde periods. Hey, I might have been a skeptic, but I wasn’t stupid – even I could see the pattern that kept emerging.
If I weren’t a believer
now, I'm sure I would be now. Our biggest mishap
was that our bookstore (we own The Well Red Coyote bookstore in Sedona, AZ)
crashed, taking with it our Point of Sale software, the only way we have to conduct
our business, and our only inventory record. It took three dawn-to-dark,
exhausting days, two computer consultants, and numerous calls to tech support ,
but at the end of it, we were up and running again. Since then my own personal
computer has been doing odd things, such as renaming folders, changing them
from words that describe that folder’s contents to a random assortment of
letters, and has been falling into such a deep sleep, it’s almost impossible to
wake it. And finally, the bright red LED lettering on my car’s radio/CD player
has faded into oblivion. Those last two might seem minor by comparison, but I
like knowing what my computer’s folders contain without having to guess, and
it’s useful to know what my CD player is playing just by looking. Mostly,
though, I’m fed up with electronic mishaps.
A side casualty in the Mercury-electronic-failings is that they take with us our confidence in those pieces of hardware and software. The absolute certainty we typically maintain that when we turn them on, they’ll always operate as we expect them to. When serious problems occur, that confidence can be replaced by a knot in the gut, and is often responsible for a financial outlay. Either a little, or in our case this time, a lot of money.
I’ve been told that
retrogrades are merely planetary slowdowns, but with my schedule, I can’t
afford to go any slower. I’ve also been told that retrogrades are times meant to teach us lessons. I
can’t deny that. The backup software operating in our store’s computer was part of a package we bought from
a company providing bookstore POS software. We were assured it would save the
day if the worst-case scenario occurred. It didn’t. So we did learn something
important, albeit at a high price, financially and emotionally. Now we’ve
rectified that with what we think is stronger backup system. I’m grateful for
that, although I wish that lesson could have come in a less dramatic fashion.
Sure, I know other planets retrograde as well, but that never seems to affect things the way Mercury retrogrades do. What’s crazy is that Mercury is the ruling planet of Gemini – and my husband Joe is a Gemini, and I have Gemini rising. Maybe Mercury expects more from us. I have news for that $%&# devil – I expect more from it, too.
How about you? Have you had any retrograde mishaps?
Not yet, Kris. But I'm on the
alert. Hoping to get through this Thanksgiving holiday. Traffic seems crazier than usual, even for Florida.
Posted by: Elaine Viets | November 23, 2012 at 09:28 AM
Crazy here, too, Elaine. The holiday unofficial suspension of all driving rules seems to start earlier every year.
Posted by: krisneri | November 24, 2012 at 01:36 PM