Last new year's, I stated some of my goals for the year. Here they are again; I'll bold the ones I actually accomplished, and strike through the ones that I didn't.

1. visiting the Galapagos Islands
2. visiting the high Andes (Cotopaxi, Chimborazo), Ecuador
3. finding a cool outcrop of graded beds in the Martinsburg Formation (late Ordovician turbidites in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia) that Rick Diecchio told me about last week
4. "walking on the Moho" in Gros Morne National Park, Newfoundland (late summer)
5. seeing Snowball rocks and Ediacarans on the Avalon Peninsula, Newfoundland (late summer)
6. visiting Egg Mountain paleontological site, Montana
7. joining my colleague Ken Rasmussen's field trip to the Culpeper Basin, a Triassic rift valley in northern Virginia
8. some cool trip next winter break (2009-10): perhaps Patagonia? Or Antarctica?

I've also got some big teaching resolutions:

1. Running a successful and robust Structural Geology course for George Mason University (spring semester).
2. Running a successful and innovation Environmental Geology course for NOVA (spring semester).
3. Running a successful and safe Regional Field Geology of the Northern Rocky Mountains course for NOVA (summer semester).
4. Preparing and running a successful and groundbreaking Honors Historical Geology course linked with English Literature 242 at NOVA, where the English professor and I will bridge the two subjects with readings of Lyell, Darwin, "A Pair of Blue Eyes," and others (fall semester). (didn't get sufficient enrollment for this one; bummer!)

On other topics:

1. Finish my M.S.S.E. degree (July)
2. Buy a house
3. Put together a series of geology 'vodcasts' on local geology (though I've gathered a lot of footage that will eventually go into this series)
4. Write a few freelance articles [link]
5. Publish one cartoon per month in EARTH
6. Prepping (cutting and polishing) a backlog of rock samples from all over the place (I'll have to share the story soon of how our "Campus Safety Officer" emasculated my rock saw out of a fear of accidents and ensuing litigation: it's an absolute abomination...)
7. Successfully moving the geology department into our new building

So what's up for the coming year, 2010?

1. More structure at GMU! Bigger, better, tweaked towards greater learning.
2. Hire and train a new member of the NOVA geology team to take on some of the tasks that my colleagues and I can't currently keep up with.
3. Actually get up to Newfoundland this year. I've got a family reunion up there in early August, so hopefully that will be the catalyst. (My mom's side of the family are Newfies.)
4. Run my Rockies course (with co-instructor Pete Berquist) again.
5. Update my website's numerous mentions of "greywacke" (English spelling) to "graywacke" (American spelling).
6. Get my geoblogging under control. I'm clearly devoting too much time to this for too little recompense. Maybe an alternate would be: find a grant or some such to fund the time I spend writing this blog.
7. Continue my cartooning for EARTH. Also occasional freelance writing pieces.
8. Scan my Cartoon Guide to Geology and post it for download/printing on Lulu.
9. Take meaningful action as a "citizen scientist" to combat climate change misinformation, creationism and Intelligent Design mumbo-jumbo, and other forms of pseudoscience pertinent to my expertise as a geologist.
10. Get those geology vodcasts going.
11. Go to Antarctica. (fingers crossed)
12. Work less. Relax more. Be creative. Enjoy life.

Labels: antarctica, canada, climate change, evolution, montana, newfoundland, pseudoscience, structure, teaching