Lamar Thames

A couple of months ago, I told you about a new web site my son was developing for me to operate and I said I would let you know when it was up and running.
Well, it has been available for a while now and it has 10 articles on it for your reading pleasure. It is called www.wanderingtourist.com. It is a travel web site that mostly features articles about lesser-known tourist venues in Florida and the Southeast, with a couple of exceptions.
One of those exceptions is the series of submissions a friend of mine, Wayne Bolla, is posting about his sailing adventure to the Mediterranean Sea, with a couple of stopovers along the way. I think you will like Wayne’s writing and the photographs he took.
Another article was written by my son, Robert, about his excursion to a family reunion during the Taste of Chicago Festival around the Fourth of July. It is well done, even if I say so myself.
The two web sites are my attempts to both generate some income and keep my mind occupied while I try to figure out what to do with the rest of my life. While I have not given up hopes of returning to work, I know that reality grows dimmer with every economic report published showing a stagnant job market.

I have made a couple of feeble attempts at reinventing myself, i.e. learning how to make creative DVDs for profit and taking a photography class to improve my marketability in that arena. Both exercises have only served to show me how woefully unprepared I am to become something I am not.
So, I will continue to dabble in the one area I am somewhat proficient — writing — and be thankful for all of the blessings that I have: a wonderful wife; loving children and grandchildren; faith, and relatively good health.
Meanwhile, as I was surfing the net the other day, I ran across a travel article that caught my eye. It was titled, “50 things to do before you die.”
I am not much of a “bucket list” kind of guy, so I skimmed the list to see if anything intrigued me. Mostly, it was macho stuff like bicycling across the country, diving with sharks, SCUBA the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia and bathe in the Ganges River. Yuck!
One of the ideas struck home, however. It was No. 15 on the list: Publish an article about your travels.
Hey, I thought, I am doing that with my new web site! How cool is that? Here I am doing what someone else considers to be No. 15 on their list of things to do. Of course, I discovered the writer had an ulterior motive for including it on his list because he works for a travel site that offers to teach people how to become travel writers.
That did give me an idea, however, for my own travel site: Develop a list of things to do before I run out of money or energy to do them. I don’t want to use the term “bucket list” because that conjures up a fatalistic image and I am not ready to go down that path.
My list will be more realistic and it will give me some goals of things to do while I contemplate what to do with the rest of my life. Like a friend of mine says on many occasions — Life is good.
I’ll let you know how the list turns out.