WHILE THE MOON is old, any of these activities would be thoroughly appropriate -- if the ground hasn't frozen and you've got a sharp knife, mind you. Speaking of hissing, do not change plans abruptly on your ram or crab friends this week -- Venus and Mars are harassing them enough.

In Ruby's mind, everything -- setting fence posts, making sauerkraut, killing hogs -- fell under the rule of the heavens. Cut firewood in the old of the moon, she'd advised, otherwise it won't do much but fry and hiss at you come winter.

-- Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain

Waxing moon in Taurus. If you work for an insensitive blockhead, it's a great day for him or her to micro-manage, particularly when parsing expenses. Don't argue about money with an earth sign like Taurus, Virgo, or Capricorn. Taurus needs company at mealtime, and will be businesslike about romance. Aquarius, in the next six weeks you have to compromise. No, this won't affect your "personhood."

I love this time of the year - you get to make sense of all the planetary transits that have come earlier, and with the sun in Capricorn, hard-headed reality checks are less painful than usual. However, some tricky bits to navigate, and not just remembering what fragrance your mother likes, and whether she prefers it as cologne or perfume.

The first two weeks of the month are fairly unremarkable, until the full moon on Monday, December 11. From there through New Year's, we got (assume I'm using a carny barker voice now) your solstice on December 21, we got the dark of the moon, the last day before the new moon on Christmas Eve, and then a partial solar eclipse on Christmas Day. New Englanders will see more than half the sun's diameter hidden, beginning at noon, and end sometime in mid-afternoon. Don't look at this directly, for gosh sake (unless you've got welder's goggles). However, you can see this phenomena in rooms with south-facing windows, where myriad tiny crescents, caused by the moon's shadow across old Sol will be reflected.

What do eclipses mean? Heh-heh-heh, I talk way too much about the malefic influences, and so for this final eclipse of 2000 (we'll have six in all), I leave it to you, dear reader, to tell me. Otherwise, click on your sun sign for a more detailed discussion of the month.