Mark Hohmeister: And now for some daring predictions

Ah, but instead my life is a string of "if onlys." As in, if only I hadn't bought that house in New Jersey right before the housing crash of the early '90s. If only I had bought that Boss 429 Mustang when I was a teenager — and kept it in the garage. If only I had become a forest ranger.

As Dan Evans, an occasional My View writer for this section, told me the other day, "My crystal ball is a mud puddle."

Still, it's the end of 2009 and maybe even the end of a decade (though I'd hate to revive the old "Did the new millennium begin in 2000 or in 2001?" debate), so I thought I'd offer a few predictions that I'm reasonably certain will come to pass in 2010.

I'll put "2009" for the date on the first five checks I write in the new year.

Florida State will go unbeaten and win the national title in its first season under Jimbo Fisher. Well, OK, they aren't all predictions. Some are more like wishes.

I will think everything that my new grandson does is wonderful. Likewise, my wife will exclaim repeatedly, "What a smart little boy!" after notable accomplishments such as drooling, grabbing the corner of a quilt he hoped to lick or looking in the general direction of his parents.

Another space movie will come out that I refuse to see because it's so implausible. I'm still upset that all the characters in the "Star Wars" cantina scene were bilaterally symmetrical. This year, we had the "galactic alignment" of 2012 with its ridiculous earthquakes and God knows what else. And "Avatar"? Chimpanzees share about 98 percent of our DNA with us, yet a chimpanzee-human "love interest" would be fairly perverted. But a "love interest" between a human and a blue, tailed creature from a planet light years away? No problem. As long as she has a good figure, I guess.