First Day of October

Where has the year gone? October? You gotta be kidding. I'm so far behind in reading assignments. It's all so technical -- data sets, bitstreams, institutional repositories, hash values, digitization, etc. I'm a creative person, a daydreamer, a nature lover. What am I doing in the world of cyberinfrastructures and stuff like that? This looks like it's going to be a lost semester. I have a 10-page paper with references due next Monday about an issue concerning Web access to scholarly information, and I don't even know what my issue is yet. The paper is based on a dry, convoluted textbook that's giving me headaches with its scholarliness. (Is that a word?) I can feel the kid in me, kicking at the restraints and responsibilities of college life, wanting to play and run and just hang out by the creek, bare feet in the cold mountain water rushing by on its way to the inlet waters. But I live in Florida and there is no cold mountain water and if you put your bare feet in a creek, an alligator just might think you're giving him a treat. So I think I'll give the restless kid some chocolate while the adult goes back to reading about bitstreams. Ain't life grand?