The last year in review...

I don't want to spoil all of the drama in this catch up entry, so I'll save most of the very juicy details of these events for later entries.

In early December, my high school sent me to jail. Don't go getting your hopes up, the rest of the year wasn't nearly so exciting. But it was a good start, eh? For a little history on this, see my court entry. Briefly, it was truancy again. I spent three wonderful, lazy days meeting deviants from all walks of life, drawing, reading, sleeping and feeling generally not guilty at all for *dear lord* not attending a school that I did not respect, whose staff did not respect me and in which I learned in only one class all four years of my attendance. (Thank you, Mr. Franklin)

Defiantly, quietly, and very quickly, I graduated. I love the sight of my diploma now not because I see years of hard work behind it, but because it reminds me that the bastards couldn't stop me from making them sign a paper that states that I have legally (and on the recommended program, no less) graduated. Yippee.

I was accepted into New Mexico Tech (with a fat scholarship). It was far from my town, and my boyfriend, Josh, had also attended and was still in the city. I began studying there in December, and did pretty well. Between trips to the Very Large Array (see: Contact), huge Geek parties in the canyons, lectures with renowned scientists and pseudo-scientists and lots of studying, I was very happy to have had the experience.

Then....

It was summer. I had a month before summer school and decided to visit my father in Colorado. It had been a couple of years since I had seen my two great half sisters, Rowan and Amber, and my stepmother Heidi. I got to supervise field trips, hike in the mountains, and hang around my dad's store in beautiful downtown Ft. Collins. Everything was going well until...

I returned to New Mexico to attend summer school, only to find that the financiers of the remainder of my tuition after scholarships (my grandparents) had decided that they were unsympathetic to my visit with my father. They stipulated that if they were to pay for my school, I had best remember who was doing so and stop seeing those who had "no interest in my future". I said that I would not hold their grudges for them and would gladly pay for school on my own terms, with my own money.

So I worked as a camp counselor for about a month in Cloudcroft, New Mexico. It was the camp I had attended since I was old enough to stay for a week without my parents and I felt privileged to be asked to return, despite the fact that it was a Christian camp.

After that month, I returned to Texas and stayed with my parents for a very uneventful little while, initially planning to attend school in town, where my tuition would be very affordable. Finally I decided to go back to New Mexico, where costs would be higher, but I would be happier, and with Josh. I moved in with him in Albuquerque about mid-September. My flighty living arrangements these past few months prevented me from attending school this semester, but in January I will enroll at the University of New Mexico, to study literature and linguistics with the goal of eventually...

Teaching high school. ;)

Stay tuned for justifications, elaborations, plans, and developments.