As a side effect of having a hobby like photography, I can’t seem to see anything without mentally drawing a big black frame around it. This evening, I was returning to Seattle on the 8:10 ferry (by the way, how did I go from appreciating free wifi, to being annoyed at not finding it?). I was completely drained from a long afternoon of dragging a full armada of home office technology (desktop PC, monitor, printer/fax/scanner; and assorted cords, cablemodems, and firewalls) into the car, out of the car, into the living room, back out and down the stairs to the basement. Not wanting to climb upstairs into the lit passenger area for merely a 35-minute ride, I lay in my car listlessly, floating in the warm dark night.

After a while, I became aware of the panorama in front of me, the tiny lit Seattle cityscape like a necklace of lights with a glowing Space Needle, and hanging above it, a giant golden moon drifting in and out of the clouds. I smiled sleepily as I pictured several different shots I could take — tiny space needle, giant moon; wide cityscape, giant moon; my favorite cluster of buildings with the moon; the moon with wisps of clouds scudding across it…

As the ferry continued to chug along slowly, and I tried to figure out camera settings in my head that would allow me to get a sharp image, I watched the buildings get larger and larger, making the moon appear to stop and sink back down. The space needle grew a little lacy frou-frou — shining arches belonging to the Pacific Science center. The ferry swung away from the needle, heading towards its pier; the moon shrank and settled on top of the tallest building like a silly hat.

We had arrived.