I was at a music festival up near Whistler on August 9 (Arcade Fire and Broken Bells headlining, yay!) and as we stood in a massive open field surrounded by mountains, we watched the moon rise full and very bright against a clear evening sky. It was gorgeous. The next day was my birthday so I looked up when the full moon was supposed to be (normally there's three days of full moon, and it's hard to tell which is the middle one, when the moon is technically at its fullest). I discovered that August 10 -- my birthday! -- was the official full moon day, and it was to be a "perigee moon", or supermoon, which is what you call it when the full moon coincides with its closest approach to Earth. A perigee moon appears 14% larger than normal, and it's brighter. There is normally one perigee moon every 13 months, but there are three in a row this year -- one in July, one on August 10, and one in September. But the August one is the biggest. And we had a perfectly clear sky to see it last night. Normally it's cloudy or stormy on my birthday, but not this year.

This is probably silly, but it felt like a special little gift.