I still havent tried these. Nor Timbits.

Photographic proof that I was in Canada

There are two alignments in the skies this week.  The first is quite auspicious:  Earth-Mars-Venus-Luna.  Mars+Venus = the lovers, the Earth places them domestically, and the moon is romance.  So for those of you with a spouse, this should be a good week to rediscover how good home cooking can be.

Honestly, no worse than any other public art, though I do get a bit of an OMWC vibe from it.

Ottawa Public Art

The second alignment is Saturn (retrograde)-Earth-Mercury.  New portents, a boost to creativity, hangovers reduced, and artistic successes.  While this alignment also includes the Earth, it doesn’t have any major relationship to the first alignment.

What does have a relationship to the first alignment is the fact that half of it (Venus and Luna specifically) are in Leo.  In that context, it just reinforces the domestic bliss aspect and indicates that the more dominant partner will have a particularly good time.  By itself, it indicates that your cat will go into heat if you haven’t had it fixed.  So get the vicious little hate machine fixed already.

In addition to the horrendously crappy food, more evidence that Ottawa is awful

Speaking of hate machines…

The sun remains in Gemini, increasing the likelihood of revelation and discovery.  Speaking of discovery, Ottawa seems like it can be thoroughly explored in a day or three.  In a way, it’s a lot like DC in that goods are of relatively high quality but more expensive than you’d expect.  It is vastly smaller than DC, and much, MUCH whiter.  Like, you know the joke about there being no black people in Canada?  It’s actually true of Ottawa.  On the other hand, it’s vastly superior to DC in the sense that it was built on top of a mountain next to a scenic river as opposed to the middle of a swamp.  When you’re on Capitol Hill, you see– DC.  When you’re on Parliament Hill, you see woods, a river, boats on said river, roses, it’s really very nice.  And the buildings I think are prettier than Federal Neo-Classical, but de gustibus and all of that.

The only part of the original Parliament complex left, because some librarian had their shit together enough to close the fire doors. Sometimes librarians can preserve beautiful things, not shatter them.

The Great Sept of Balor

It’s also pleasant to look over the river at Gatineau, and note that if the Quebecois get uppity, you can just lob some cannonballs down at them and they can’t really much but curse at you in an amusingly silly accent.

Jupiter (retrograde) in Scorpio. Same Stars, Different Day.  Although, when it comes to misrule, there are some interesting examples in Ottawa.  For example, we stayed in an AirB&B next to the Greek embassy.  Posh neighborhood, right?  …no.  Behold:

The Syrian embassy at least resembled a residential law office

If your embassy is located in a student rental unit, you’re not really trying very hard.

There was a Hyundai Elantra in the drive and a fat crumpy tomcat walked by and sprayed it.

 

In DC, the various countries at least made an effort with their consular offices.  Here, you could tell that nobody really cared about being there, but some countries were interested in showing off.  The DC-typical Embassy Row is visible from the river, and clustered next to the PM’s official residence/eyebrow storage facility were France, the UK, Indonesia, Some wealthy petrostate which I forget, and then The US, with the biggest, classiest, most abassadorrific embassy in the whole capital.  The Foggy Bottom crowd would give their very best pair of striped pants to be in that embassy, I’ll tell you.

 

Mercury is in Cancer.  Mercury is the planet of news/tidings/announcements, and Cancer is the sign of secrets, so this could be a problematic week for you if you have something to hide.  Also, call your mother.

Parliament is visible to the far right over the blue crane.

Ottawa built a memorial to the Stanley Cup. I don’t know when exactly.  I assume they’ve resigned themselves to the fact that the real thing will never be here again.

Mars is still in Aquarius.  Mars of course, is the planet of war, and I can’t quite figure out the Canadian military.  When I was in Quebec City, I saw soldiers at the Citadel, and they were in British ceremonial dress:  scarlet tunic, bearskin hat, the whole 8.23 meters.  The fact that they were wearing that uniform while shouting orders in French hurt my brain, but here at their War Memorial/Tomb of the Unknown Soldier combo they are wearing something similar to a US army uniform, not at all similar to a UK service kit:

also, note how economical the Canadians are. Instead of putting up a new memorial for every war, they just add the dates of each new war to the memorial they already have.

Note that the only tourist brave enough to approach the guard is an American

Yeah, June in Canada is pretty fucking gorgeous.

Saturn retrograde in Capricorn.  In my despair to come up with anything novel to glean from this never-ending astrological feature, it occurs that this might be one of the most self-referential  situations ever.  You’ve got Capricorn, the stubborn, change-resistant sign, and into that you’ve got Saturn (Chronus, Father Time, the Grim Reaper) the sign of endings flipped so that it’s negated — it will never end.  Of course, this is also true because retrograde motion inhibits/reverses the progress of a planet through a sign, keeping it there longer.  Couple that with the fact that Saturn is an outer planet with long orbital lengths, and we wind up with what we’ve got today.

TL;DR on Ottawa:  all the cost of Montreal, half the charm.  Still a hell of a lot better than Ennis, TX.