a quick succession of busy nothings

I'm off to Germnay is less than 24 hours! It will be so wonderful to see Lena again, and I am so excited that Mari will be coming from Norway to join us for the weekend. I expect it to be nothing less than fantastic.
I have a lot to get done in the next two weeks though. Well, not really. Two 2500-word papers, so about two 8-page papers, which is really not that bad. It's just that I haven't started doing the research for one of them and I don't know what to write about for the other one. I have done quite a bit of reading and research for the paper I'm planning to do on Maria Edgeworth and her novel, "Belinda," it's just that I don't have a direction to take the paper in. Which sucks because I now have to return two books to the library next week instead of their original due date. Which, I would like to add, is something I really truly HATE about the library here. If I've checked out a book for a project and someone else requests the book, they bump up the due date, which totally sucks. It's not MY bloody fault if I got to the book first; why shouldn't I be allowed to keep it?? Plus, I know that no one else's paper is due until well after Christmas, so I don't feel much pity. I may keep the books a few extra days and just pay the overdue fines if I need them. So I guess I'll probably try to write my English paper first, so I should focus on that - but I currently have no direction for it whatsoever. It's very frustrating. I have so much information and I don't know what to do with it.
In other news, I'm registered for 18 credits for the spring semester at Hamline...biodiversity/conservation bio, concepts of nature, senior seminar, crossing borders II, and british lit. from 1789. Is it madness to take this many credits? Will I die with 18 credits, two jobs, and being a news editor at the Oracle or is this a workload I can handle? I had originally planned to drop British Lit. once I got signed up for senior seminar, but now I'm thinking about taking it anyway, 'for fun'. Is this crazy? Thoughts?
I have more to say but sadly I have no time. So more when I return from Hamburg, I guess.