Uber Moon and Other Lunacy

We had read about the moon event for Saturday night when the moon was to be the closest to the Earth --and full-- and reportedly would be the visibly largest of the year. Our home is surrounded by trees that limit our sky view and we have no horizon view. So we selected a road by a large open field where we waited for the moon to rise. We sat with the windows up to  keep the contained air conditioning in; even though the engine was off and the unit no longer produced cool air, we were comfortable. 

As soon as the moon came into view, I put down the window to start taking pictures, while resting the camera on the door. Once we got out of the car, we were immediately and viciously attacked by a variety of biting insects, especially no-see-ems, also known as sand gnats. They were just awful!

But we were there for a mission.

 I had to try out the zoom on the new camera. (None of these have been cropped or edited in any way.)

We stayed out taking pictures until we could not really stand it anymore. 

Unfortunately, in my haste and excitement, I had left my window down the whole time! The car was FULL of biting gnats! B had every right to be aggravated with me, but in his typical calm, said nothing. We cranked up the AC and put down all the windows as we went down the highway home, but we continued to be attacked. They especially love to get in my hair, but my arms looked like I had measles when I got into bed later.

So this morning it was Sunday and we got in the car and by, golly, it was still full of no-see-ems. We swatted and slapped all the way to church. We put down the windows and turned the defroster on cold as they seemed to have congregated in the crevices around the windshield. (So much for the groomed hair!) Somewhere along the way I told B: "You might be a redneck if your rearview mirror has a  sticky flycatcher coil hanging from it, covered in no-see-ems!" As we pulled into the church parking lot, B spotted the bloodmobile and remarked that we should leave the windows down and maybe the bugs would be attracted to it. Well, we did not leave the windows down, but we  only found one or two bugs still there after church. Thank goodness!