I thought I'd start the new year off with an older photo from the Namibia trip in October. This is Mark, taking pictures of a dune beetle on a white dune in the Skeleton Coast. We were actually looking for a lizard called Angolasaurus, but there had been a bunch of rain earlier in the day. When the dunes get wet, the sand sticks together, making it hard for the lizards to dig through it and escape - so they just don't come out. We only had a short time to look, so we were out of luck. Maybe I'll get there again soon to have a better, and more successful look...
Which brings me to my attempt at some New Year's resolutions for this year. Just to preface these, I'll say that I usually make broad resolutions, not to make them easier to break, but mostly so that I can convince myself I need to do several things to fulfil them. As an example, a few years ago, my resolution was "write more". My intention was to get myself to 1) be better at corresponding with friends and family, and 2) be more productive in terms of getting scientific publications out. It worked, I did write to friends more that year, and I managed to get 4 publications in. On the other hand, I've never put my resolutions in writing in a public place before.
Well, here goes. The big one is to do something hard that I've always wanted to do, or that I've been meaning to do. The inspiration for this was talking to some friends on a Friday, and hearing about their plans to do a 100 mile (each way), 3-week hike through an interesting part of the outback near Darwin. This came shortly after others were talking about running triathlons, doing adventure challenges, etc., and a conversation with my office mate about her trip to Tanzania to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro. So, "something hard" will probably involve weeks/months of preparation/training, might involve some travel, and will be, well hard. It may also be tied to my second resolution, which is to spend more time outside this year. This includes things like eating lunch outside, and more ambitious things like camping in national parks I've been wanting to visit. Number three is to recover my creative side. I used to do more - musical instruments, photography, etc. - and I've let that all slip for too long, so that goes into the milieu. The last one is intentionally vague (and not nearly as shallow as it might sound at first), because I've got to do some thinking about what it actually will look like, but it is to be a bit more like the people I admire. This has nothing to do with hairstyles, cars, jewelry, or houses, but does have to do with attitudes about life, how I treat myself and others, etc. Like I said, still some thought needed here, to see what that will actually look like, but it struck me as a good idea at the time.
So, just to round things out. I spent New Years eve on the beach, overlooking a calm ocean, after a quiet day of light rain. Very nice. On the way back, after hearing fireworks going off around town (and some giggling coming from the bushes), I found some tadpoles stranded in a freshwater puddle on the beach. It's been raining a lot here - about 180mm (~6in) - in the last week, so there is a lot of runoff, and the frogs are putting eggs everywhere. These unlucky blobs happened to get washed out onto the beach, where the next high tide would take them to a salty death in the sea. So, I went home to pick up a ziplock bag, and the first thing I did this year was to rescue several dozen tadpoles, from at least 3 species. they are now swimming around in a nice ceramic pot on my balcony, waiting for the slime to grow up so they have something to eat.
