Mercury in July

You probably have noticed that the number of articles posted here declined dramatically in July. This was partially due to my being away for Convergence over the weekend of the 4th, but mostly because Mercury essentially unloaded on me over the course of the last couple of weeks. Now, problems related to Mercury do manifest from time to time, but I found it odd that so many of them seemed to hit at once.

1. My PC died. This turned out to be pretty easy to fix - the problem was the CPU fan went out and the machine was overheating.
2. I took my car in to a mechanic because it was making a noise that I thought was from something in the exhaust. It turned out that the problem was inside the engine and would cost substantially more to fix than the car is worth. I decided I would be better off buying another car with a lot fewer miles, since in my experience replacing or rebuilding an engine isn't worth it unless you can do the labor yourself.
3. My Internet router died. Replacing it wound up being a serious pain. The first one I got was nice but I couldn't get it to connect to my ISP for some reason that tech support couldn't help me with. I returned that one and picked up the recommended model, which worked at first but died the next day. I exchanged that one for another of the same model and that one appears to be working.
4. The one issue I'm still having is that my phone, which is on a VOIP router, is still down. For some reason it seems like the VOIP router can't connect properly to the new Internet router. I'm still in the process of getting that fixed, but at least I have Internet back.

I would say that some of this was related to the record hot weather here in Minnesota, and maybe that had something to do with the car. But the thing is, my home is air conditioned and there's no reason to think that the heat would have affected the various electronics. Even during the big heat wave the temperature stayed the same inside my house.

I took a look at the astrology and my best guess is that Mercury was in sextile with both Saturn and Mars, the major and minor malefic. Sextiles are not normally considered negative aspects, but one of the things I realized is that as I replaced these various failing components I found that I liked the replacements a lot better. The old CPU fan that came with my PC was rather loud when it ran on full and the new one is whisper-quiet. The car I bought, a Chrysler Sebring (I'm a convertible enthusiast), is much nicer than the Sunfire convertible it replaced. The router seems to be working about the same, but we'll see how that goes over the next couple of months.

So the normal interpretation of a sextile, as an opportunity for positive action, seems to fit my situation pretty well. I just wish it hadn't been quite so expensive to take advantage of it.