the skimm



I consistently struggle with two pretty important things in life: geography and current events.

I was a lost cause on the news-front until Adam read me a small article from a spring issue of Vanity Fair. It was about The Skimm, a new email subscription targeted towards young professional women. I am relatively young and only semi-professional, so I hopped on that bandwagon before he could finish the next VF article. (They are so LONG.) Ever since, around 5:30am I get an email with updates on all the largest news stories of the day. I read the entire email every morning while I blow dry my hair.

The Skimm writers recap boring important stories in a way that's easy to understand and entertaining - they have a great sense of humor. #lotsofhashtagsused.

I'm sure many bloggers have written about The Skimm. (First article of business of getting the blog back in action: start writing. Second article of business: get caught up on reading.) But in case you hadn't heard of  The Skimm before, or weren't sure if it was something you'd actually read, I highly recommend subscribing to it. Gone are the days of politely nodding my head and smiling until someone brings up the last episode of Duck Dynasty. I can now have educated conversations with my superiors at the office about Obamacare, the MLB playoffs, and the Twitter IPO with little research and effort. Maybe someone will notice and I'll get paid more next year.....

trip highlights: austin, tx

If you follow me on instagram, you may have noticed I visited Austin, Texas last month. It was my first time to Austin, and while we were only there for 48 short hours, we hit up most of the spots on my must-see list.

The majority of our time was spent on 6th Street. My favorite bar was a dive on the Dirty 6 side called Dizzy Rooster, which I later found out was one of the favorite haunts of the Real World Austin cast.

The entire bar was covered in bottle caps. I loved every filthy, rusted one of them.

6th Street was oddly welcoming to K-Staters. Call it southern hospitality, or a way to get purple people in to your bar to spend a bunch of money. Either way, I liked it.

The weather was insane, and lucky for us we were out early enough to get a prime spot on the roof-top at Shakespeare's. From what I encountered, the tailgating experience is nothing like it is in Manhattan, or most Big 12 campuses for that matter. Instead of SUVs and RVs lined up in fields and parking lots surrounding the stadium, most people hang out at the bars on 6th Street, or went to a banquet hall that I can only describe as where your aunt may have had her wedding reception in the early 1980s. It was so Texas, and it was awesome.

After our loss (boo) and a perfect night's sleep on Saturday, we awoke on Sunday to meet friends at my now FAVORITE brunch place ever: Bess Bistro on Pecan. First off, they serve dollar mimosas, which apparently is a normal occurrence in Austin. This needs to become a thing in KC. Stat. Brunch was all-you-can-eat, so I started off with a mimosa and an order of deconstructed croque monsieur. I've never even had a constructed croque monsieur , so I wasn't really sure what I was ordering. It had just the right amount of truffle oil on the toast, a perfectly crispy-fried poached egg, and spicy blackened ham. After a pass through the delicious buffet line, Adam and I split the most popular order of the day - Fruity Pebble pancakes. Oh My G, I thought about those pancakes for days afterwards.

We had almost a full day before needing to head to the airport, so after eating our weight in breakfast food we bid adieu to our friends and went to Rainey Street. It's a small street where the adorable houses have been transformed into bars with backyard games, garages turned into restrooms, and parking lots filled with food trucks. Such a fun little street with so much character.

ATX - you were fun. I'll be back.

happy wednesday

best friends

I'm finally tackling my inbox, and found this article I had emailed to myself this summer.

Hope those instagrams make you as happy as they made me.