I feel like there is more niceness needed around these here parts right now.

Between the #nestlefamily twitter debate and internet trolls and and Glenn Beck and various other bits of insanity, I want to continue to be the annoying glass-half-full kind of a gal that makes cynics (and Nate) absolutely crazy. And so I want you to know about some exceptionally cool people who deserve a little recognition.

This is worthwhile.

1. My friend Gabby, aka the brilliant Design Mom (seriously, she should change her site to thebrilliantdesignmom.com) is having a baby. I am overjoyed, in part because the world can use more children raised by parents with exquisite taste and who never seem to be in a bad mood or have anything but loveliness in their lives. I offered some pregnancy advice to her–some stock snarky answers to the inevitable questions about having baby #6. Feel free to add your own. She’ll need it.

2. I do not really know Kevin, the author of Always Home and Uncool, but I’d imagine he’s not uncool at all. Friday was his wife’s birthday, and also the same day his daughter was diagnosed with a not so good autoimmune disease called juvenile dermatomyositis. There was a big ol’ grassroots effort to get people aware of Cure JM Friday nd I blew it. Although I figure any day is a good day for awareness, and not just October 2, so here I am, two days late, telling you about it. Head over and learn more?

3. I want you to meet a beautiful woman named Maggie. She write a deligthful blog called Maternal Dementia with a tag cloud highlighing words like PARIS and FRIENDS and MEMORY and HOTEL-DE-VILLE.

When she learned a couple of weeks ago that Nate and I were going to Spain (courtesy of the fabulous Voyage.TV whose site I will mention until it is so stuck in your head that you have no choice but to bookmark, visit daily, and rename your firstborn voyagedotteevee) she made it her personal mission to mine her Spanish contacts (she knows bullfighters!) and try and get us into El Bulli.

As in the #1 restaurant in the world. Where pretty much there was no chance of getting into. Ever. We might have a better chance of winning the lottery.

I asked her why she was doing this.

She wrote to me:

When I first moved to Europe, I was overwhelmed by the people who didn’t really know me – friends of friends sort of thing – who went out of their way to make sure I had an amazing or authentic experience while I traveled, who for some reason wanted me to move beyond the condition of being a tourist to being a voyager. They’d get me into hidden hotels or tell me about a known-only-to-locals café/bistro, some relic in the back of an obscure church or a secret stash of sketches behind a locked door that would open merely by asking the museum guard — this sort of thing that would take my breath away or make me pinch myself to be sure it was really me living this experience. It made all the difference.

But this was the clincher: last night I watched this video: and I said, okay, I gotta try.

So to answer your question: I don’t need anything for this — except perhaps your forgiveness if we can’t pull it off.

And I sat there and cried.

I needed an email like that that day. It didn’t matter if she could get us in or not. Just that she wanted to.

There are good people in the world. Good good people who give back energy instead of sucking it from you. And they deserve ours in return.

So no, we couldn’t get into the restaurant. But Maggie had a great time reconnecting with old friends around Europe in the process. She gave it her best shot up until the final hour. And I’m left with a warm fuzzy, annoying glass-half-full feeling that I hope will last way longer than Crab Marrakesh with Tomato Foam.

So what about you? Do you have a blogger you’d like to honor? Just someone good who made your day or did something lovely or inspires you to be a better person?

I’d love to hear about them. Really.