The plan was simple.  Get out of work as quickly as possible.  Get home, focus the telecsope on the Moon and Venus, and wait and watch.
 
The test run from yesterday went sort of smoothly, until my mind started wandering and and I fogot to adjust the scope and compensate for the Earth's rotation, hence, losing the moon at about 7:15~ish on Tuesday morning. 
I was sure to be more determined and focuesd for the actual event, however.
 
4/22/09 6:03 AM
After a long onvernight shift, I was off the clock, and walked quickly to my car, with one thing on my mind.  "Must see show!"
 
6:27 AM
Got home.  Said "Good morning to the kittens, and brought my telescope out onto the deck.  The sky was still dark enough to easily find the Moon and Venus, but they were low in the sky (from my vantage point) and were obscured by trees from "telescope" height.
6:38 AM
Both were high enough to clear the trees.  "Nabbed" them in the finderscope, and got them into a sharp focus in the telescope.  So far so good.  Now it's time for a little bit of patience, and the will to not let my mind wander.
 
6:53 AM  Adjusting for the rotation of the earth every two-three minutes (I really need a scope that tracks items, no?  *hint to self*) watching the two bodies angular seperation converge, it was at this time that I could fit the entire crescent of each in about half of my field of view.  Breathtaking indeed, but would it get better?
 
6:58 AM 
OH NO!  The mind wandered (no doubt you can imagine what I was thinking about instead) and I lost them.  Not being far out of my field of view, they were quickly recaptured!  (Whew!)
 
7:08 AM
After observing for a while now, I notice that there is a brighter portion of the crescent of the moon, very close to its leading edge.  "A crescent within a cresent"  ...sort of.
7:09 AM
I notice the sunlight hitting the neighbors porch.  But I am safe from the glare and disc of the sun, having stragetically placed myself so the other nieghbors tall house, on a slight incline, would safely block out the sun for at least another 45 minutes.  (I figured this out from the day before).  Observing with my naked eye, I notice it exceedingly difficutl yo spot the pair.  It is still possible, but I need to "angle" my glasses to get a sharp naked eye image (time for a new prescription, no doubt).
I go back and forth between the scope and naked eye viewing.  At 7:25 AM, I finally lose sight of both with my naked eye, for the remainder of the observing session.  But both still look good in the scope.
 
7:32 AM  The pair are getting very close to each other.  I decide to stop taking notes, and patiently watch.
7:37 AM (from memory, later transferred to notes).  Imagining the disc of Venus it's not illuminated portion would be roughly occulted at this point in time.
7:38 AM  Here's where semantics come into play.  I'm using a reflector.  The visual "bottom" tip of the crescent (as seen through my scope) makes first contact with the illuminated leading edge of the moon.  As viewed from earth, this would be the 'northern' part of the Venusian crescent.  But Venus rotates counter-clockwise, so, if you use the "left-hand rule" (which is still a debatable issue, although many astronomers do not) you could say it actually was the tip of Venus' "northern" cresent.  I'll let the definition makers decide what to call it.  For me, it was just darn awesome.
7:40AM Venus is entirely occulted by the moon.
 
*Note, I did not bother to follow the moon in the daytime sky longer to wait for Venus to emerge from behind the non-illuminated side of the moon.  I had already spent over an hour outside, with patience and a slight chilly breeze hitting me the entire time.  There will indeed be other occultations I will be able to see, hopefully some that occur at night, too!  I was just very appreciative that the skes were clear.  So often, an event like this is just asking for cloud cover.
Also, as I was following the pair, there were moments when it felt, psychologically, that Venus was "gaining" on the moon.  The rotation of the earth was the cause of this misnomer, as the moon was actually gaining on Venus, but because of the rotaiton of the earth, it "looked like" they were both racing westward.  When, in actually, only Venus was (and doing so at a virtually unnoticable pace in degrees of sky, because it is so distant), as the moons leading edage is always its eastern one as seen from earth.