In which I REALLY get my diploma

It's been a tough week, I gotta say.  I've been calling the records office every other day since about a week before I got on the plane, just to be sure my plans are going through and I'm graduated.  Well, I called again on Monday last week to see how long until my diploma gets here and they tell me, "Diploma?  You've got six credits to finish!"  Naturally I poop my pants.

Long story short, everything got figured out.  There was a math error, and one of my classes was able to count for missing credits and both my adviser and the records office were AMAZING help.  I should get my diploma tomorrow, it's being overnighted out here to sunny CA and I'm all sorts of excited to see it!  And then send it to my boss in China and be like, "SEE?  I'M A GOOD PERSON"

I finally figured out how to get videos up here (PROtip: it's not hard) and here's a gem from back in MN.  It's two nights before I left, down at the BEST place to chillax in bemidji- Brigid's Cross Irish Pub.  I asked the bartender that everybody has a friendcrush on to make me a drink that would commemorate my adventure to China.  He poured me three glasses of PBR and told me it was tradition in Shenyang (turns out he went there!) to say 'gongbei' and chug the hell out of them.  Like a champ, I did.

Video is unable to upload for some

reason... I'll try to figure out how to

fix it.  :)
 

Making my parents proud, right there

After that I was QUITE smashed because I'd spent the previous 5 hours making friends with Whiskey 7's and the karaoke mic.  It was the best send-off a girl could ask for.

Here in California my dad's got a pretty awesome job.  Well, normally he manages a bunch of Rebox kiosks and employees.  But his AWESOME job is wood-fired pizza catering.  He's got two wood-fired ovens, one that he built from scratch in the backyard and one that he ordered on a trailer so he can take his food from place to place.

 

There are a few other people in the area who also do pizza like this, and it's probably the most delicious thing in the world.  Seriously, I could eat pizza every damn day and NEVER get sick of it.  Best part is that you can have completely new, weird pizzas that you'd never find at Papa John's.  My favorite is alfredo sauce instead of red sauce, gorgonzola cheese, thinly sliced potatoes and chicken if there's room.  Muy delicioso.

Last Saturday we went antiquing in Sacramento.  (Don't worry, this ties in.)  There's this really cool spot under a highway where people just show up and peddle their expensive looking wares.  It looks a lot like a really classy hobo village.

They had all kinds of weird stuff!  I spent the day looking through the jewelry and comic books (found someone who had the first 5 issues of Xmen.. awesome...) but if I was still in the steampunk mood, I would have hit a TREASURE TROVE.  Pocketwatches, gears, springs, old cloxks just begging to be taken apart and glued onto tank goggles... it was wonderful.

Anyways, one of the food vendors there was a guy that my dad knows- also in the pizza catering business.  We got some delicious pizza and chit chatted with this super-hot (and super-pretty) oven just feet away.  I ordered a gorgonzola and carmelized onion pizza, which only took about 90 seconds to cook (that's how hot the oven was) and I ended up with this beauty.

It was delicious.