Sometimes life really beats you down, to the point you almost give up hope. Then there are other times when you can’t believe the luck you have. Last week was one of those better weeks.

My story hit #1 on CNN, as previously mentioned, but the big news is that it wound up staying at #1 for the entire work day! This helped the story become the #1 Most Popular story on mentalfloss.com for the week. I think that’s a first for me…

Then I had another mental_floss story hit the web last Friday – Give Me A Sign: The Stories Behind 5 Hand Gestures – and it became a pretty big hit on the site as well. It didn’t go anywhere on digg.com (and I doubt it’ll be on CNN), but considering it was posted on a Friday and didn’t have the benefit of a few days to breathe, it was successful enough to become the #5 Most Popular story on the site for the week. So I had two stories in the Top 5 this week, which is definitely a first for me.

It was an exciting week, one that has helped me re-energize and get re-engaged in my writing. I’m working on a few story ideas right now that I’m hoping will be hits. I can’t expect another week like the last one, but, hey, a guy can try.

My follow-up article at mental_floss on the story of Tanner Sandlin’s sale of Air Raid for the Atari 2600, was reprinted by CNN.com last night. And then it became the #1 story on the news site earlier today!

Needless to say, it’s been a good morning.

It’s been a pretty exciting week for me to say the least.

My last mental_floss story, 9 Very Rare (and Very Expensive) Video Game Cartridges, was reprinted by CNN. And now it is directly responsible for the sale of an Atari game that went for $31,600 on eBay.

A guy was reading the CNN reprint and thought, “Hey, I used to have that game!” He ran out to his garage and dug out what became only the thirteenth known copy of Air Raid. It gets better – he also found the original box for the game, making his copy the only one in existence that can be considered complete.

He threw the whole thing up on eBay, where he was nice enough to link to the CNN story that let him know what he had, and the rest is, quite literally, video game history. The $31,600 became the second-highest price ever paid for a video game cartridge and by far the highest amount for an Atari game.

I did a brief email interview with the seller and a follow-up article will soon be available on mentalfloss.com. I’ll be sure to post a link to the new story as soon as it runs.

It’s not every day you help make history. So needless to say, it was a pretty exciting week for me.