benefits of the insomniac

Well, the other night, I was up...again. I sometimes wonder if it would be more productive if I worked the grave yard shift. Anyways, this night however, my sleeplessness actually worked to my benefit. As I turned in between tosses, I remembered that there was a lunar eclipse that night/ morning. I looked at the clock, which read well past 3am. Too late I thought, if only I had remembered around 2am. But, since I was up, I thought, "eh, why not?" So, I crept out of bed, trying not to wake anyone. These efforts were soon negated when I forogt and let my screen door SLAM shut behind me as I went into the backyard. Much to my surprise, it wasn't too cold. Also to my surprise...snow (I didn't know, and was still in slippers). I looked around and couldn't see anything, but just to be sure, I ran behind the house to check the sky. Behold! Not what I expected! I thought the lunar eclipse would cause the moon to be blacked out. Instead, the fully eclipsed moon before me was almost full, its silvery face stained with a rusty orange glow. This meant of course, I had to run inside to get my photography equipment. This was when I realized that a) I should really finish reading that manual for my camera and b) it gets a lot colder when you're handling a metal tripod and kneeling down in the snow.
Oh, and someone else in the house ended up getting woken up. But that turned out to be a great thing as well.