TV Week...

It must be my week to be on TV! ABC Channel 13 out of Houston came down today to do an interview and shoot footage of a book drive that a Houston student, Jesse Woodall, did for Education In Action as part of his leadership service. Jesse is an 8th grader at St. Thomas Episcopal School in Houston and here is his press release:

1. Tell me a little about yourself. I am an 8th grade student at St. Thomas' Episcopal School in Houston.
2. Why did you organize a service project this year? I am part of Education in Action's Lone Star Youth Leadership Council, and as a member, I had to do a service project.
3. Tell me about Education in Action and the Leadership Council. I was referred to the Education in Action program by my 6th grade math teacher at Baines Middle School. You have to be a good student and be a leader at school to be a part of it. I have attended two of their summer camps. In 2007, I went to Austin, and in 2008, I went to the one in Houston/Galveston. The Houston camp is the last camp. Now I am working toward being a camp counselor. In order to be a counselor, you have to go through their Leadership Council program. It's a two year program where I have to do leadership activities and service projects.
4. What made you choose Operation H.E.A.R.T. as your project? I wasn't sure what I was going to do, but after Hurricane Ike hit, I knew that I wanted to do something to help the kids in Galveston. I decided that a book drive would be a good thing to do. I read a lot after the hurricane when we didn't have any power, and I thought that it would be something that everyone would support.
5. Where did you collect books? I started at my church (Southminster Presbyterian) and its school (Southminster School). I collected a little over 2500 books from them in November. I also collected some books from my friends and neighbors in Sienna Plantation (about 500). My biggest drive was at St. Thomas where I collected over 6100 books in one week!
6. Did you do it all by yourself or did you get help? I had help. I was supposed to recruit people to help me since this is a leadership project. My parents helped a lot, so did my sister. I also had help from many people at church. A couple of friends in my neighborhood helped me get my collection boxes ready, and several of my friends at STES helped me collect and count the books at school. Mrs. Stewart, the school librarian, was my faculty sponsor who helped me get things done at school. Two of my friends are going to Galveston with me on Thursday (This was last week) to help me deliver the books to the school district.
Anything else you would like to share? I knew that people would donate books, but I never would have guessed that I would collect so many! My goal was to collect 1000 children's books.

1,000!! ha! He certainly met his goal and I think he is an outstanding young man!

So anyways, today there was a board meeting and I knew that I needed to clean out the board room (it's where we sort the books b/c it has the most room). I decided to dress comfortably...so I wore jeans and a nicer button up shirt and my fuzzy slipper/scuff shoes that Mom got me for x-mas. I dressed down a bit because I knew I would be moving around alot and wanted to be comfortable. Plus, I didn't know if Teresa would be there to help me or not. She was out the day before throwing up sick and generally not feeling well.

But it was a pleasant surprise when I got there this morning and she was there, so we get the books moving and are relocating it all to where we want it (eventually we round up some janatorial help) and at 11:30 a.m. we get a call that Channel 13 wants to come down and interview...at 1:30 p.m. That is 2 hours away! Not much time to get ready and look Decent because The News is coming down! Thank goodness that I wore full-makeup and not lite-makeup (cause there's different levels of makeupness...full-makeup includes eyeshadow, blush, and lipstick...lite-makeup is base, lipgloss, and mascara). But I was not Decent and was not going to wear jeans on The News. So I had to go do emergency shopping at Ross to get pants (which also required shoes) and I found some really nice dk. brown slacks for 6.99 and dk. brown snakeskin pointy toed mules for 12.99!

Now ya'll I don't talk on TV because I will sound all Ya'llish Southern and will get Red With Embarassment and will talktofasttomakeanysense. So I told Teresa she would have to do it (she is dramatic) and she did a wonderful job and even squeezed out some tears for the reporter lady(tho she was kinda questioning and sort of making her cry to get drama on The News).

I've been looking around on their website but can't locate an online clip of it yet...so keep checking and I'll be posting it when I find it so you can watch me move books around in all the boxes.

Warren says I'm famous. :D lol