Keyan Bowes

Here's what the moon looked like today, around 1 a.m. in San Francisco.

When my kids were little, I taught them the easy way to tell a whether the moon was waxing, and we would see it grow bigger until it reached the circular perfection of a full moon, or waning, and we'd see it shrink away to darkness.

"Simple," I told them. "If it looks like the letter D, it's a waxing moon. If it's a C, it's waning. Dogs advance, Cats retreat."

Our travels didn't take us to Australia. It's the other way round, there.