JULY 2009 - As reported by a visiting adventurer.

This is our last stop-off before our journey to Dalension-6. Early this morning Sam and I packed up our Galaxy Cruiser X-CLASS-5000 (with optional I-pod speakers and BluRay player) and placed our dogs Jean-Paul and Sartre into the kennel statis chamber. They have to stay in there the whole trip, as it is still too difficult to play fetch in zero gravity. Sartre looked at me with her big brown eyes as I gave her a Peanut Butter Mega Protein Surge Biscuit (dogs can live off the calories for up to four months) and, as a little treat, a Beef Blast Nugget. She seemed to be saying that she knows I always feel horrible having to place them in there but it’s really fine, they hardly notice and have all sorts of adventerous doggie dreams. Sartre licked my hand and I kissed the top of her head before releasing the airlock door and pressing the button to release the Sleep-Aid. They snuggled up to each other as they always do, slumbering peacefully while we glide through deep space.

Sam is now picking out some Astronaut Ice Cream for us, not that we need any more food; I crammed Cargo Bay 5 with enough Phad Thai packs and Veggie Burger kits for two round trips, but Sam gets nervous before long space flights and snacking is one of the ways he calms himself down. I’m contemplating getting the constellation globe; I usually just use the navi-computer but there is an advantage to seeing the whole big picture. When I was younger and space travel was still pretty rare, I had a constellation map painted on my ceiling. When I couldn’t sleep (which was fairly often) I would plot courses to the stars above me, wondering what the planets around Rigel looked like, or what kinds of perilous situations I could get myself into on the way to Centaurus. Seeing the globe makes me think back to those nights. If I had a time machine and could go back and tell my six-year old self that some day she’d breeze past Rigel like it was a stop sign, would she stare at me in awe? Call me crazy? Or would she totally believe it?

My random thoughts have been interrupted by Sam, who has moved on from the ice cream and now wants me to pick out a glow stick. He’s fidgeting around the store like a little kid, picking up everything, putting it back down again, talking to himself. Once we’re in the cockpit ready to take off, he’s fine, but in these last moments on Earth he’s a wreck. He just handed me a yellow one, and I touched his hand, he knows I’m trying to help him calm down. Maybe he needs one of the Lil’ Traveling Companions…

Okay, Sam’s ready to go, he’s up paying for our stuff. I’d better get up on the roof and prep for blast off. I can’t wait to see the bright lights of Naurlon, Dalension-6’s biggest city. It’s been too long since I’ve stayed up late cruising the Halcyon Highway, collecting moonbeams and watching the Monrovia butterflies float by. Have you ever been there? It’s amazing, really, I highly recommend a trip. Best of luck to you on your travels, fellow space venturers!

APRIL 2009 - As reported by Lt. Captain Mudd

Log 1: Journey on the happy dance steps.

Log 2: Mudd’s women were here 4/18/09. We came to explore and found more than was expected. We wil be teleporting out within the hour, but we found our canned Argon and now we can use our remaining time smelling the flowers at TerraBella.

Log 3: What a rip-off – the flowers were silk with artificial fragrance imported from Arkon-3. How dreary!

We teleported off the planet, each of the mission team bearing a single silk rose, the minimum we could take without offending our hosts. Now everyone using the teleporter comes out smelling like fake roses. I’ll ask the maintenance crew to sterlize the teleport facility.

Log 4: ROSES ROSES ROSES ROSES ROSES. The smell suffocates the ship like too much bad perfume. ROSES ROSES ROSES ROSES ROSES The entire crew smothered in hugs from Aunt Mathilda. ROSES ROSES ROSES ROSES ROSES Unable to concentrate on our assigned tasks. ROSES ROSES ROSES ROSES ROSES Sending out a distress signal. ROSES ROSES ROSES ROSES ROSES ROSES ROSES ROSES ROSES ROSES ROSES ROSES

Log 5: Rescued by a crew of domestic robots on their way to Antares-6 when they received our distress call. The invoiced amount for cleaning was outrageous, but we negotiated the total down significantly and look forward to retrieving our second officer from Antares-6, in one Earth year, after he’s worked off our debt to the domestic robots.

JUNE 2009 - As reported by a visiting captain.

The Miserable Girls

Once lived three girls named Maddy, Mon-ique and Madison. They were very miserable. They had an evil stepmother named Gretchen, who made the three girls do all the cooking, cleaning, and laundry. Gretchen never did anything but tell the girls what to do. Gretchen was able to boss the girls around because their loving father lived in San Francisco. But one day Maddy, Mon-ique and Madison got fed-up with their stepmother. In order to escape the evil Gretchen, the girls bought a plane ticket to San Francisco – or so they thought. This is where our adventure begins.

A temporary glitch in the computer system sent all three of them instead to Alaska. Little did they know that Gretchen had a fancy teleportation device that she used to travel to Alaska after being tipped off by a talking monkey.

As she appeared in the snow. Gretchen cackled to herself. She set out across the frozen tundra with an evil gleam in her eye. Meanwhile, the three girls came across an unusually large tree in the middle of snow. Oddly enough, it wasn’t frozen or dead – it had green leaves and even a little moss at its base.

“How can this be here?” Maddy asked her sisters. “Trees don’t grow in Alaska.”

“Of course trees grow in Alaska,” Mon-ique said scornfully.

“I don’t know,” Madison said, eyeing the tree warily. “Maybe snow trees grow, but this looks like a summer tree to me. Maybe a spring.”

Just then a large gapiing hole appeared in the tree’s trunk.

“I’ve always thought of myself as an early autumn tree,” it said in a slow drawl.

MAY 2009

Things that make us sad: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/11/world/europe/11phair.html

A moment of scilence, please, for Venetia Phair, the girl who named Pluto.

FEB 2009 (as reported by Boatswain Jen K.):

Staff Pick: Barnard's Stars

• Small, unassuming pebble-shaped objects available in light blue, pink, yellow, and aqua.
• Exposure to a low-light environment reveals the objects emit a steady glow from tiny magic crystals hidden inside.
• A time-tested standard of quality: Barnard's Stars are one of our store's inaugural products.
• A handful placed in a clear container brings a tiny pocket of hopeful light to any darkened office, child's bedroom, or spacecraft cockpit.
• A smart choice for the thrifty space traveler (or kids with little pocket money)--you can get two for just a quarter.
• The real Barnard's Star is a low-mass red dwarf in the constellation Ophiuchus (or Snake Holder), about six light years from Earth. Some scientists think it may have planets orbiting it, much like our own solar system.

JAN 2009 (as reported by Quartermaster Alicia C.):

As everyone knows, most people get their space supply shopping done early in the week. Thus, the Greenwood Space Travel Supply Co. cannot reliably depend on late Friday afternoons for the highest volume of sales. What these shifts, at times, lack in profits though, they more than compensate for with a steady stream of distinctive, non-paying visitors. These are a few of the most memorable.

Attila had a waist-long ponytail, Nike sweatpants, a red plaid lumberjack jacket, and a baseball cap that said "Relax" across the front in bold yellow capital letters. He carried a VCR in his hemp shoulder bag, and spoke with a thick, unidentifiable accent. I casually asked him where he was from, and he looked at me with intense, piercing eyes.

“Earth!” he responded sincerely. I noted the coincidence of our shared origins. I gave him the briefing about 826 Seattle and its team of amazing young authors and dedicated volunteers.

Attila then lingered in the store for another half hour or so, interspersing random philosophical statements ;with distracted manipulations of the store's many intriguing products.

The majority of the inventory, unfortunately, he found unsatisfactory. The patented "Allayers of Ennui" (a.k.a. harmonicas), he argued, would be useless to blow on in space “because there’d be no air!” The Nonorganic Hamsters (a.k.a. oval-shaped Koosh balls) "weren't very hamster like." The one item he did like was the Robot Claw, which, he noted glowingly, "you could use to pick up dog poop!"

On his way out the door, Attila saw one of the self-adhesive “Communist Mustache and Beard” sets for sale in honor of the upcoming Mustache-o-thon Fundraiser. The mustache and beard came affixed to a cardboard cut-out of Lenin's face. “I was born in Hungary!” he told me. “Do you know who this is?!” I said yes, a bit sheepishly, thinking it might not be such a kitschy ironic souvenir to someone who had lived under Communist rule. He wasn’t offended though. With an unexpected smile and some amusement he told me of the days when the Communist police officers would hassle him for not cutting his ponytail.

Finally, with a tip of his “Relax” baseball cap, he was off.

A woman came into the store carrying several tote bags. Breathing heavily, she hoisted one of the bags onto the counter, reached in, and pulled out several yards of gray-ribbed plastic tubing like a surgeon extracting robot intestines. "I brought some of these in several months ago," she told me, "and I thought you guys could use some more for decoration. I sterilized them and everything, and I just hate to throw them away!"

Curious, I asked her what the mysterious material was. She blushed. "Frankly, I’d rather not say. Just… I promise. I washed them. The smudges on the outside are only residue from my newspaper crossword.”

With my interest piqued, I felt compelled me to question further.

“OK fine!” she said, caving. She leaned in conspiratorially. “They’re old breathing tubes. Some people might find that gross or something, but they’re totally clean now. They just keep sending this stuff to me! And it seems like a waste to chuck it. I bet you guys could do something creative with it!"

I thanked her politely. She smiled, said she really supported the work of 826 Seattle, and promised to return in another six months with more tubes.

I was taking inventory on the T-shirt selection in the Greenwood Space Travel Supply Co., when I looked up and saw a piece of sushi as big as a Volkswagen Beetle waddling towards me. In honor of Halloween, a girl had transformed herself into an enormous cross section of a California Roll. The circumference of her get-up forced her to turn to the side as she squeezed in the front door. Hundreds of carved foam rice granules the size of hotdogs covered the core of her costume. In the center, were several irregular swaths of pink and green cloth representing the crabmeat, cucumber, and avocado. A final broad stretch of dark green felt covered the perimeter of her garb as the seaweed casing.

“I must have used about three gallons of glue putting this together,” she told me proudly. She explained she was “reverse trick-or-treating,” and pulled her arm into her costume core to extract a miniature Crunch bar. “Here you go,” she offered me, “Happy Halloween!” And with that, she squeezed her way back out of the store. I regretted not having any wasabi to offer in return.

THINGS YOU CAN SEE AT THE GREENWOOD SPACE TRAVEL SUPPLY THAT YOU CAN'T SEE ANYWHERE ELSE (OR ONLY A FEW OTHER PLACES) - as reported by Quartermaster Emma P.:

• Pluto, rightfully represented as an in-good-standing member of Our Nine Planets.
• A slew of construction-paper valentines dedicated to Galileo. Sure, he died 367 years ago, but love knows no bounds.
• People ravenous for space ice cream. I had no idea that people could enter a store craving freeze-dried, powdered versions of their favorite frozen desert, but it's usually the first thing they ask for when they walk in the door--except for wise guys who want to know if we sell spacecraft. We don't, but you can park yours on the roof if you want.
• At least two different hand-drawn renderings of Barack Obama by folks under the age of 15.
• A can of Certainty. Also, for good measure: a can of Uncertainty. Because you never know when you need to be nail-bitingly unsure of something looming in the future.

THINGS YOU CAN'T SEE AT GSTS

• Aliens (though we have their brains, their spores, their puppies, and a few nonorganic hamsters, who are so cuddly that it hardly seems fair to call them “aliens”).
• Lard, thank goodness.
• REO Speedwagon.