I have yet to express how awesome it is to work with and meet all the people I've seen and admired for the past few years.

I realized this the other day when we were over at Technorati for lunch (no more sentances with that many links in such a small space, ever). My first point-of-yay was that I walked in and knew a few people that don't work at 6A and even though it was just Mule (*just*, psh!), I give myself points for steping outside the circle (in to an only slightly larger circle, but a larger circle nonetheless!). Meeting people was easily my bigest fear when moving across the country and for good reason - it was the second-most-hated thing about college (the first being that I can't stand "learning" in that college way). So I had some pizza with a lot of everything on it (I don't think I've seen just a regular pizza if I haven't ordered it - they like stuff on their pizza here) and met some new people. Pizza and new people should NOT be combined as I was having trouble eating and talking at the same time and who wants to shake hands with you after you've been holding pizza? Anyway, I realized about half way through that I could identify almost half of the people that I *didn't* know by their flickr username and/or their website but I didn't know their names. So instead of actually meeting them, I just made it a point to check their real name next time I was on flickr. Yes, I'm still working on this social thing.

The second part of my amazement is the people I work with every day. It takes just the slightest moment when Ben walks by and says hi for me to respond (that moment is spent mentally looking around the room for someone else he might actually be speaking to and then thinking to myself "Who...me?"). Even people who aren't so much "blog celebrities" do some really awesome stuff that I'm constantly amazed by. It's the most motivating thing I can ever hope to encounter.