Got everything packed? Good, good. Don’t forget the picnic (pronounced pick-a-nick) basket. Then there’s the water supply, or at least that machine Mitch invented that makes water from thin air using something that looks like a spark plug. (I think the Robinsons used it on Lost In Space, right alongside the clothes washer that folded garments and wrapped them in plastic.)
Well, it’s been a long summer, and we have done absolutely NOTHING that can be considered recreational. Yes, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) rolled over to the hardware store once or twice to pick up some machine oil and batteries. Yes, the mansized tuber struck up a friendship with some ornamental plant outside the 7-11. Yes, Mitch Macaphee went to half a dozen mad science conferences, one held in an abandoned cement plant on the north end of town. (I told him to have it here, that one abandoned mill is just as good as another, but he wasn’t having any of that.) Still, none of this can be considered recreational in a summery kind of way. (You could say that none of them amounts to summery execution, but I really wouldn’t say that if I were you.)
So, what was it going to be? Road trip? Nah. Did that last summer. Sickening, frankly. How about a boat trip? We have the Erie Canal running practically right alongside our abandoned hammer mill. All we need is a cheap gondola and a couple of oars, then it’s off to wherever that canal goes. East or west, I reckon. Just like Life on the Mississippi, except less crackery. And no Mississippi. No?
You see, THIS is why we never go on vacation. We can never freaking decide what we want to do or where we want to go. The only time we travel is when we’re on interstellar tour (or when we time travel, which is disorienting, frankly, and I have discouraged Mitch from dragging us along through the time/space portal he keeps in his office). It’s like we’re just visitors on this, our home planet. Though come to think of it, the weather has been ungodly hot just lately. And Louisiana is under water. And California is on fire. Maybe this ISN’T our home planet. It does seem kind of inhospitable. Hmmm…
Okay, well … boat trip it is. Pull the gondola up to the jetty … whatever any of those words mean.
I suppose you’re wondering where your podcast is. Well, I was getting to that. THIS IS BIG GREEN has been coming together slowly. We did the voices for the next episode of Ned Trek last week, then we’ll need to do some editing and dubbing, etc. We’re probably looking at another couple of weeks, during which time I will frantically try to dig up some not-too-uninteresting material from our archives. There will likely be a few more Wayback Wednesdays on tap, so stay tuned.
One of my obsessions of late has been rebuilding our YouTube site. That’s my hobby, if you will, until Matt returns from Peregrine Falcon watch. (To catch up with him, see his 
Trouble is, we spend so much time on 
Speaking of the Carpenters, Matt and I have been tracking some backing vocals for the next crop of songs – about eight of them, to appear in the next installment of 
Still, he has a point. It would be a kicker to go on one of these shows, particularly Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert, since it would mean being transported back to the 1970s. I think our music would do much better in that decade, even if a lot of the songs pull from cultural references that would not have occurred yet. (On top of that, I could, maybe, save Salvador Allende and Oscar Romero from assassination!) Unlikely? Perhaps, but a man can dream. And dreams can be nightmares. And I had plenty of nightmares in the seventies, so … it’s not so impossible, is it? Huh?
Not much we can do except continue working on our music. Yes, music comes first around here – ask anybody. We’re currently producing a few more songs for the podcast, a couple of which may make it on to a collection at some point. It’s kind of the same process we’ve been going through for the past few years – write and track about a half dozen songs, throw them up onto the Web, then do it again. That’s how 
Mitch has been in poor humor since they found his coveted dark planet beyond the orbit of Neptune. He had been clinging to the vain hope that it would remain the undiscovered country for another generation, at least … plenty of time to convert it into a black hole or neutron star. In any case, now he’s drowning his sorrows in experimental work, and it’s got all of us on edge. Hard to work on music when the laws of physics are collapsing all around you. Last Monday morning, for instance, he temporarily suspended the third dimension within the immediate boundaries of our hammer mill. It was like being a ColorForms character for the day – very distressing!
There is one slight wrinkle, of course. Planet GJ 1132b 
How can we be sure there are music fans on XZ9-Marvin 14? (Note: Before I get flooded with angry messages from disgruntled astrophysicists who have never had an opportunity to name a planet, consider this a planetoid pseudonym just for the purposes of this conversation.) It’s what Mitch Macaphee, our mad science adviser, calls the fourth principle of astrophysical convenience: Any planet or planetoid large enough to land on has to be home to some kind of sentient life form, preferably one that speaks English. (The third principle is about breathable air.)