And so we are here at the deadline...

If you've been following the misadventure that is Trading up, you all know that today was the deadline I had set for myself to decide upon my first trade. I had in fact decided which of the three items I was going with, but as I sat down at the computer this morning I found the following letter in my inbox:

Hey there,

I hope your week has not been NEARLY as insane as mine
has been. I'm ok, it's just been a LONG week!!
Needless to say, i'm QUITE happy it's Friday! :)

Ok, so i'm here to beg the favor of the Capt. in
trying to buy myself a coupule more days for the
deadline of the offers on Trading up. Can I get you to
agree to give me until Monday????
PLLLLLLLLLLEEEEEEAAAAAASSSSSEEEE????????

I had EVERY intention of getting my offer together
before the deadline of the end of the month, but alas
life happened! However, if the Captain would be so
kind as to give me until Monday to either get you my
offer or else forfit my chance for this round, I'd be
MOST appreciative and would make sure my appreciation
was properly expressed for the Captain's kindness in
granting me an extention.

And I'll even let you in on WHY I'm wanting this
particular piece of novelty - I'm putting together a
whole "Star Wars" themed gift for my dad for Father's
day, so that's why I even care at this stage,
otherwise I'd just wait and get in on this later.

So, if the Captain could be so kind and gracious as to
give me until Monday, I'd be MOST appreciative.
I'll be awaiting your reply....

Signed,
A stressed-out damsel :)

Well, never let it be said that I cannot be swayed by the pleas of a damsel in distress...
even more so the type of damsel that would make a Star Wars themed gift for her Pop. I once tried to put together a "Supercar" themed gift box for my Dad, but found that "Supercar: stuff is way hard to find. Think virgin at a porn convention kinda hard.

I'm gonna give it another week or two.

Got yet another offer...

Over last weekend, someone offered me a six foot tall inflateable Spider-man for the Pez dispenser. I have decided that the deadline for me to move on one of these items will be the end of the month. Get your bids in now while you can, folks...

In other news, some of my friends are looking at buying condos over in Slidell. Normally, this wouldn't matter to me much, but for an additional 350 dollars a month, they can get a 50 foot boat slip. I'm already negotiating to put my boat there :)

If I might direct your attention to the right...

My good friend Drew, in the comments for the last entry said that I should let everyone know what offers had been made thus far. Sadly, all this did is show how unobservant a guy Drew is.

Of course I already thought of that... Under the heading "offers being considered" You will see the items i've been offered so far for the Darth Vader pez. A difficult choice to say the least. While the He-Man action figure is totally cool, I'm thinking that the stuffed Baby Kermit will be more tradeable in the long run. I am always willing to hear any commentary over what item I should trade for whatever is on the table... so feel free to comment on what you would like to see me trade a given item for, or even if you feel I've made a mistake. I live for stuff like that :)

Off to a promising start...

I am so stoked.

I've got two offers thus far for Pez Vader... I figure I'll give it a full week though before I accept one of them. I have it on good authority that at least one female admirer is frantically searching her belongings for something to trade because she noticed the part in "the rules" that says I will make all trades in person. Apparently just the prospect of a visit from the Big Kahunah is enough to motivate some to action, which is fine by me :)

It's true, I'll travel up to 1200 miles from New Orleans to make a worthwhile trade. Quite frankly, the only reason that i've limited myself to that distance is that it's the farthest I can realistically drive in a single weekend. (Fly? you do remember the whole fat guy/no money thing, right?) I would like very much not to lose my job over this boat thing, ya know. It's funny though, that when I told my boss about this, he laughed pretty hard. And not in the "I'm laughing with you" way either. More in the "did you ride the short bus to school" kinda way.

I just grinned and told him I would make it a point to invite him to my boat-warming party.

So, why a Darth Vader Pez dispenser?

It was a tough thing to decide what of my personal posessions I was willing to give up to trade for my little experiment... so I used the following criteria:

1) It had to be something I genuinely feel bad about parting with, so that the sacrifice would mean something to the great gods of Karma.

2) It had to be worth, (monetarily) as little as possible.

I have lots of fairly worthless stuff... so I narrowed it down to two items, the aforementioned Pez dispenser, and my Superman alarm clock, pictured to the left. When the alarm goes off, superman flies around it in a small circle.

Choosing the Vader Pez also had the benefit of while not being a gift, it was virtually free ... making the final acomplishment of getting the houseboat that much more amazing . Plus that, I got a strange feeling I may need a little help from the force to make this happen.

It took Red Paper Clip Guy a year to realize his dream... I give myself two due the obvious setback of trying to use the dark side of the force for good :)

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.