late to the party (fashionably?)

Happy New Year and almost one week, people!

I don't usually do recaps at the start of a calendar year; I save them for when the blog hits a milestone. So far they've been a regurgitation of things I've already said, partially digested and snippety, yet somehow still extremely long. But now that I'm past 500 posts (shit, when did that happen?) and there are four of you out there paying attention, I feel like something needs to be said. So for the next one, I'm promising to do a *real* recap. Maybe. Lucky for me, I have until March to figure out what that means, exactly.

I know, that wasn't much to say when something needed to be said. So my promise to you today is daily posting for a bit. Normally this isn't too unusual, but I've really been slacking for no good reason at all. This week I will make up for lost time: My colleagues are leaving me all alone to hold down the fort/put out fires/organize filing systems/photocopy the side of my face/create contracts/establish protocol for the coming months/listen to pandora.com and dance around to my heart's content for the week while they tend to East Coast clients.

I wasn't too keen on staying behind while they racked up frequent flyer miles that I certainly could have put toward a free ticket to visit H, but I'm over it. Last night, Kaiya and I were catching up over Sizzling Rice Soup and Beef Noodles in the town where we grew up and talking about passion. Not the stuff of daytime soaps and new relationships, but the fuzzy, contagious kind that makes everyone around you feel better about being alive and able. You know the people who have it: they really care about something enough to make other people care about it, too. And not only that, they make people want to go out and do something about it, whether it's saving orangutans, eating lentils, planting trees or wearing UGG boots.

On top of that, this morning I was catching up on Salon.com's Broadsheet posts and spent 18 minutes watching a speech given By Isabelle Allende at a conference for intelligent forward-thinkers, coincidentally called "Tales of Passion."

I was so inspired by Allende's phraseology, humor, charm, delivery and innate passion for other people's passions, that it made me want to throw off the comforter every morning with the intent to do something truly good. I know this post has a lot of links, but if you can only click on one and make some time to watch it, make it this one. [via salon.com]

I hope there's stuff we can all be passionate about in 2008. You know, besides daytime soaps, new relationships (where applicable). Oh, and cookies.