And so it begins.

Hi there, blogosphere! My name is Rob, and I want to live on a boat. I guess you could say that it's part of my mid-life crisis, but that's not entirely accurate.

I am 37 years old, divorced, with a horrid credit rating (mostly thanks to my ex-wife). I'm a fairly likable fell, although there are undoubtedly more than a few ex-girlfriends and at least the one ex-wife that would disagree with that. I live in New Orleans, Louisiana, and am unquestionably one of the luckier residents of the city, as all I really lost was my pre-katrina job. My post-Katrina career pays okay, but I still lead a very hand-to-mouth existence. Despite my financial woes I live in a nice neighborhood, have some really great friends, and plenty of hobbies that occupy my time.

Overall, I'm a pretty happy guy.

However happy you think you are though, as you get older and wiser you start to put things in a different perspective. I realized a few weeks ago that while I am fairly happy with the decisions I've made along the way, Rob at age 10 would be very disappointed in Rob, age 37. Not only do I have neither a flying car, videophone or a robot housekeeper, but I am also not living on a boat.

As long as I can remember, I've always wanted to live on a boat. Making my home on the waves has always been something that has appealed to me. My Dad said we come from a long line of seafaring Italians, and so all of us are drawn to the lure of the endless oceans that cover 75% of the planet. The same is true of my Mom's side of the family, (all Sicilian) so I guess I got the Mediterranean double whammy. Of course, life gets in the way of such boyhood dreams, (after all, it just isn't practical to have a wife start a family on a boat) and so I wound up a landlubber.

A rather blubbery landlubber at that.

When I was young, and guidence councellors would ask me where I saw myself at age 40, I would always say "living on a boat"... and yet I don't. This is a situation that must be rectified. I don't have a wife or kids to worry about, it's just me. In that aloneness comes a certain freedom.

Of course, if was as easy to do as it was to say, everyone would live on a boat. For a man with a worse credit rating than a chimpanzee with twelve credit cards and a mail-order banana service only a click away, it's a far more difficult prospect. I am determined to celebrate my 40th birthday on my boat, but how?

Then I came across red paper clip guy and was inspired. This man, through a sucession of trades took a red paper clip and traded it for a house.

I don't want a house, I just want a houseboat. It doesn't even have to be a houseboat, just a decent sized cabin cruiser I can live aboard. And I'm willing to start trading with something much cooler... a Darth Vader Pez dispenser.