Well, in August I moved to Austin, started some amazing classes, started dating an (I thought) amazing boyfriend, and had a great first couple months. The BF and I had some rather jarring ups and downs toward the end of the year, but I got A’s in all my classes. Besides some frustrating health problems (apparently, in addition to not being able to eat gluten, I cannot eat anything without vomiting, getting really dizzy, and experiencing general pain throughout my whole GI tract), it was a good semester.

Over break I experimented a bit with double-knitting and made a scarf for the BF.

It was stash yarn I’d gotten in Massachusetts, some very soft alpaca, and I didn’t have enough for a full-length scarf, so I got two skeins of a different yarn in pretty similar colors and then switched the stripes. I thought it was a neat effect.

I really like the vertical stripes.

The BF was ecstatic upon receiving this scarf; his whole family thought it was amazing, and he wore it everywhere. He gushed things like, "I really hoped you’d make something for me, but you always say that you don’t finish anything, and I was afraid to ask you because I thought you wouldn’t want to make me anything. This is the coolest gift I’ve ever gotten!" etc, etc.

On January 15th, though, I got a call from his ex-girlfriend’s roommate, telling me that the BF had been cheating with his ex-girlfriend since…well, the entire time we were dating. 

He still has the scarf. He’s still saying he loves me and he can change, too, but I stopped listening to that BS a month ago.

I finished my Team Zissou Hat:

And I made another GAAA square:

I also made a doily this weekend. It’s currently drying in the 105F sun. Texas is too damn hot.

I leave for Austin on August 21. I have two weeks of work left, then I’m going to Amherst, MA for a while to see my brother, and as soon as I return home I’m moving to Austin. I will only live in this house for 13 more days. I can’t quite believe it. I cannot imagine how everything will change. It’s like trying to imagine a non-carbon based life-form. It’s simply impossible, unfathomable.

For the summer, I’ve been working in the R&D lab at Daisy Brand (sour cream and cottage cheese). I love my job. Food science is intriguing, and it’s much less toxic than the organic chemistry lab I worked in last summer.

I’m taking physical chemistry, genetics I, persuasive & argumentative writing, research methods, and computing for biomedical engineers next semester. P chem scares me a little. I loved physics, and I’m great at chemistry, but after a cursory look through my text I do feel a tad nervous.

Woo. Life is zipping on by. I’m 18. I’m working full time. I’m starting at a huge university–so different from community college. I’m moving out in two weeks. I’m registered to vote. I’m excited, and I’m scared.

I wrote my speech for graduation today. I kept it short and limited it to four bits of advice: follow through on your dreams, think for yourself, broaden your mind, and try to be happy.

I’ve been knitting more.

My feet always seem to end up in my knitting pictures. 

I finished up the spring semester, but I have to finish one more class before I can really feel as though I’m done. Since the college semester is shorter than the Texas Education Agency’s attendance requirement for high school students, I am taking a Maymester microeconomics class. It is all right. Three hours a day, every day is tedious, but economics is not bad.

Knitting? Not much. Maybe over the summer. 

I got a perfect score on yesterday’s Microbiology exam.

There was a lot of progress on the new sweater before the semester started. But then—the semester started.

I read the worst book ever. Naked Lunch. I recommend you never, ever read it. I then proceeded to read A Clockwork Orange, which is delightfully edgy in a way that Naked Lunch can only dream of being.