Crazy good weekend! Report from Pixelodeon and the Ron Paul video becomes a YouTube hit!

Most of this weekend was spent in Raleigh. I left Reidsville at about 4 p.m. on Friday afternoon and reached my friend Chad's place a little after 6. For the past five weeks I've been studying my brains out for the Praxis exam: that's the big series of tests given to prospective teachers. It was actually two exams that I took on Saturday: one that morning for content knowledge, and the second later that afternoon on teaching methods. And, I think that I did pretty well on them! The first was over a hundred multiple-choice questions that you had to use a number-2 pencil to fill in those little bubbles for your answers, but the second was stuff you had to think about and write out. Basically that exam provided two knowledge areas that you had to make lesson plans out of. Even though that was the harder of the two, I had more fun doing that one. I left the testing center at St. Augustine's College feeling pretty upbeat about it. I should find out in a few weeks how well I did.

And later that evening, Chad and I went out for pizza and then drove to a theater to watch 300: his first time seeing it and my second (here's my review from when Dad and I saw it in April). I drove back home later on Sunday afternoon.

Meanwhile, other stuff had been going on all weekend...

This was the weekend that the first annual Pixelodeon Independent Video Festival was going on at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. Three-hundred-some selected videos were screened at this thing... including that first commercial from my school board campaign! Wish I could have flown out for this thing, but I had to stay and take the Praxis exam. But I did receive some great news about the kind of reception that my commercial got at the event: one of the curators told me that "It was fantastic!" He said that people loved it and that they were "disappointed" when told that I hadn't won the election. I told him that if people enjoyed it that much, then I'd have rather had that than have won the election (not that I wasn't trying my best to win, 'course :-) So hearing about the feedback from Pixelodeon has definitely already made my week...

...as has the reaction to my first pro-Ron Paul for President video: it made it all the way to #10 on the "Top Rated News & Politics" videos on YouTube for this past Saturday! At one point it was the third highest-ranked Ron Paul video for that day. A lot of people have left some awfully nice comments about it on the video's page. And quite a few of them have one burning question above all others: "Did those photos clog-up your toilet?!?" Miraculously, they did not... but it was definitely a concern that I'd had. And there've been a few more ideas for Ron Paul videos that I've had in the past couple of days. Might make another real soon.

And, that was my weekend. Between the serious task to overcome and the groovy response to those videos, and the great fellowship that I had with a lifelong friend, and the conscious choice to completely abstain from blogging or any other routine activity that I usually involve myself in and what a refreshing respite it was, this weekend pretty much had it all.

If only it could last... 'cuz tonight is going to be one insane school board meeting, if the last two were any indication :-P Will report on that later tonight.

And there's something else I'll be posting about later on today: my own lil' way of celebrating the weekend's success :-)