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Last evening McDonald's was playing host to no fewer than eight homeless people, which was no problem in and of itself -- customers are customers, but two of them: Jonathan and Marnie were loudly chattering like magpies to no one in particular.

It can be hard to concentrate when someone else is thinking out loud. It's harder when two of them are being thoughtless out loud.

So when I left about 9:30 p.m. I gladly exchanged the hothouse atmosphere of McDonald's for the quiet coolness of a January evening.

My mind was on going eastwards to bed but as soon as I crossed Hemlock Street and crested the little rise of the alley on the south side of West Broadway Avenue I was moonstruck.

The closer I came the smaller it got

There it hung, straight above the alley, 30 or 40 degrees at most in the night sky, the Moon, magnified by dust or, more likely, moisture in the air to at least twice its normal size.

None of my cameras have excelled at night shots. My new point and shoot Pentax is head and shoulders better than the Nikon it replaces but still not as good as the old Samsung I dug out of a dumpster. But the Moon was such a big target, I thought, how could I miss.

All I needed was to get about a block-or-so "closer" to get a clear, unobstructed shot. It was worse than trying to get to the horizon. The nearer I got to a good spot the smaller the Moon became -- it was deflating before my eyes.

I finally went up on the Toys R Us building's rooftop parking knowing it was was no longer worth the effort but determined to still give it a shot.

You can see a bit of the Toys R Us sign reflected in the glass curtain-wall of the building. A little to the right and above, someone has apparently just thrown a large white beach ball out their window. Click the image to enlarge it.