after waxing philosophically about light and dark, i spent a big chunk of my day with 65,000 of my closest friends at lavell’s house.

and lavell was in the house.

because i know how tiresome it can be to get stopped by obnoxious fans who are always asking for an autograph or a photo (not!), i did not take a picture of lavell, but i practically bumped into him as soon as i entered the stadium. we go back a long way, lavell and me. i made him chuckle the first time we met by sparing him the usual

“aren’t you lavell edwards?”

and asking him “aren’t you ann cannon’s dad?”

this time because i was already too in his face to walk around him and give him a break by not recognizing him, i just stuck out my hand and shook his firmly and said

“hi. how’re you doing? have a great day!”

we go early to the games because the early birds get to watch the drumline strut their stuff in the northwest corner of the stadium. my favorite part is the solo parts when people from the audience get a chance to pick up sticks and pa rum pum pum pum.

i love it when people pull my kid out of the crowd so they can take a picture of themselves with him. he’s kind of a cute kid, don’t you think?

we were playing air force, so the game began with a flyby. (it’s a good thing we let air force strut their stuff before the game, because once it started it was our turn to strut our stuff.)

we have student tickets, so our seats could be anywhere. this time we sat on row 19 in the corner of the south end zone. those are some pretty decent seats. it’s like practically being on the field.

which is especially cool when the cougars are in a scoring mood.

while we liked the view from the corner just fine for the game, we always feel the need to take in half-time from the 50-yard line.

i used to think cymbals were kind of tame, but i have since learned you can add a little move and groove to the cymbals as well as with any other percussion. (half-time is still pretty tame, you really should catch the pre-show. they have a lot of fun with that.)

after the show we headed over to the concessions stand in the southeast corner, to support the phs softball team and talk to the hand.

the portals at the south end of the bleachers usually sees a lot of action. we met up with lavell again and got to see the pilots from the flyby. it was all so top gun.

for some reason our portal was also graced with the presences of a human slice of papa john’s pizza (no photo available, because i drawn the line at snapping pictures of foam pieces of pizza), a real live falcon (i have always had a thing for falconry), and of course…

my buddy cosmo. for some reason, cosmo and i seem to be caught hi-fiving a lot in the tunnel by portal u. as a side note, i also have to say that this week’s installment of the cosmo movie was pretty funny.

while i missed sitting in front of twist-and-shout guy, all in all, it was a great game. and that made it a great day.