You're right of course, although I would argue that the difference between 1/11 the distance to the moon (geostationary orbit) and 1/4 the distance to the moon are not off by an order of magnitude, compared to LEO or other lower orbits.

Yep. Keyword is "transfer" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geostationary_transfer_orbit

Looks like a bi-elliptic transfer to me. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bi-elliptic_transfer