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Last night I went with the guys to see undefeated ASU play Cal in Sun Devil stadium. Here are some highlights from the night…

1. Assault with a Deadly Frisbee. After the clock ran out and the Sun Devils were victorious, dozens of people in the crowd launched large Frisbees from their high-altitude seats over our heads and towards the field. Of course everyone in the stands watched the flight because we all knew it has to land somewhere, and it could end up hitting someone and cause drama.This one Frisbee could not have found a better victim. A pair of 40-year-old guys working with the media had just been let onto the field to record the celebration. They had cameras and equipment and they had to hurry to get onto the field amongst the football players. All they had left to clear was an open stretch of 30 yards before they would ram into the brute insanity of victorious football players.

The Frisbee hit the first of the pair (the fatter of the two) right in the forehead and startled the life out of him. He dropped his camera and reached his arms wildly up to his head. He packed 10 seconds worth of motion into a half second, and the crowd loved it. He had to have known that those 10,000 fans left in the stadium were cheering for him. He shook it off, picked up his camera, and went running down the field, more determined than he was 5 seconds before. The crowd kept cheering.

2. Angry security guards. I know these guys are just doing their job when they prevent students from charging the field, but I also understand they aren’t law enforcement. Their job is to intimidate students, rather than to prevent them from coming onto the field. They have no authority to arrest you or write you a ticket. Regardless of how intimidating they pretend to be, it always comes down to a game of numbers: 100 guards vs. 70,000 fans. Just kick down the fence and run and bring all your friends with you. Let them be angry, that’s their job. You go celebrate, that’s your job.

3. Characters on the field. This week is Halloween, so many students came to the game in costumes. One of the first kids to break the barrier and charge the field was a dude wearing a the head of a Woody costume from the movie Toy Story. This a large mask, maybe 2 feet tall, had a permanent smirk of confidence. So when he made it up and over the fence and through the security guards, he turned to the crowd and opened up his arms expecting an applause. How can you not cheer for Woody?Another student busted through the fence and was quickly wrangled but a short and stocky security guard with a lot to prove. The student pulled him from the end zone all the way 30-yard-line like Rudolph pulls Santa’s sled. It was there that his shirt started to rip. By the 40-yard-line, the tenacious guard had only a ripped T-shirt in his hand as the bare-chested student sprinted to the other end of the field, arms in the air victorious as the winner of the Boston Marathon. The thousands in the crowd cheered for him.

4. Why not? After seeing 100s more charge the field, I decided I was tired of being a spectator. Four security guards had forced the gate closed by the time I was ready to make my move. I tried to coerce some drunk fans to help me knock the gate open again, but they were too inebriated to cooperate with anyone. So I hopped the low fence near the goal post and sprinted through the guards.

As I ran across the 50-yard line, I remembered the last time I rushed the field was in 1999 when I was a student at Georgia Tech. Several photographers were taking pictures of me because I was putting on quite a scene dancing in the middle of the field. A few months later I ended up getting cast for The Real World, and apparently me dancing with that awful look on my face was the only photo the campus newspaper had of me. They published it several times that year, twice on the cover.That was eight years ago, and I am all the wiser. I crossed crossed the 40-yard-line with a pleasant smile and a dutiful trot, much like a victorious coach heading into the locker room.

5. Multitasking at the goal post. How things have changed since 1999. Back in the day at Georgia Tech, the students were concerned with one thing and one thing only: bringing down the field goal post. It was a thrill for soon-to-be engineers to unleash their inner lumberjack for one night. Freaks, geeks, and jocks all worked together until the giant came down. Nothing else mattered.This is just not how they do it anymore.

The students spent half of their time celebrating, and the other half recording and reporting through the cell phones. The mob chanted and cheered with reckless abandon, but they stopped in a second and arranged themselves for a big group photo. You need these types of photos to show what a party animal you are on Facebook.There was a lot of Facebooking* going on during the celebration. Guys were hooking their female friends with one arm, and with the other arm they lifted their phones up high and snapped a photo of the moment. I wonder how many dating relationships begin with this ritual. You have to admit, for something so spontaneous, it’s an intimate moment. There’s no room for anyone else in the picture–just the two of you–and you have to smash your faces close together to even fit in the shot. It’s a modern-day version of holding hands or carrying a girl’s books. At any given moment, 1 out of every 5 people on the field were in one of these just-me-and-you photo shoots.

I witnessed the most heroic of multitasking at the trunk of the goal post. I was in the sweaty mosh pit of students ramming the base try that tried to rock it back and forth with hope that it would give.

One kid had one hand rocking the post and the other hand texting his friend on his iPhone. His thumb attacked that iPhone and the buttons bubbled and bubbled again. It was such a contrast from one hand to the other. One hand did the blunt work of the primal man wanting dominance over the post, the other hand pecked out victory to his friends who weren’t cool enough to be there. I guess it really is the same thing.

My pool is a major source of drama in my life. First of all, I should explain that the pool is the centerpiece to my backyard. I have two floor-to-ceiling windows that frame the pool for anyone in my living room. At night, the pool radiates sexy blue light into my backyard. I call this “Miami Vice lighting.” And I like it.

(Since I’m on the subject, I was never able watch Miami Vice when it originally aired in the 80s. I suspect that my parents believed it was too titillating for my young eyes. From the commercials I knew that the show about cool guys who drove cool cars with pretty girls. And every scene had a neon sign. And I liked it. There were two occasions over the last five years when I was feeling nostalgic for the 80s, and I recorded two random episode with Tivo. The first episode was kind of cool, a mafia episode set in Cuba. The second episode–recorded 3 years later–was not cool because it was the same episode from before. What are the chances? It’s like asking a girl out on a date, only to realize you two already dated in high school.)

So anyway, my pool adds a good vibe to my backyard, especially at night. The next afternoon when it’s hot, the pool is a fantastic way to cool off. But for the past month, I have not enjoyed either aspect of the pool. Because it was green, green, and green. I say that three times because three times I applied the $50 concoction of medicine from the pool store (as prescribed by the all-knowing pool store employees) and all three times it did absolutely nothing. Green. Green. Green. Do you know how much that sucks?; After the third batch of medicine, the pool looked as bad as when I did absolutely nothing. All that responsible action and no results. It hurt my self esteem.

Tired of losing the fight, I decided to drain the pool on Saturday morning. This is one of those rites of adulthood that is intimidating because it’s something I’ve never done before.; Who knows what could happen? What if I burn out the pool pump? What if I drain the pool and there’s a dead ox in the bottom?

With half the water gone on Monday, I suspected that the pool pump didn’t have the muscle to suck all that water out of the hole. Dennis at the pool store confirmed this: “Draining your 20,000 gallon pool with that little pump is like driving in reverse for 20,000 miles. You could do it, but it doesn’t mean you should.” How can you argue with that? I just wish he imparted the same Confucian wisdom when he prescribed chlorine doses last month. So that night I went to Home Depot and rented a drop-in pool pump.

This was a pretty cool machine. It’s the size of a fire extinguisher and has an electric cord and a fireman’s hose that come out of the top. I held the hose in one hand and the electric cord in the other, then kicked the pump into the pool. It soon disappeared into the green lagoon. Seconds after I plugged the cord into the wall, the water surface started to ripple as the fire hose torqued and inflated with water. Then the end of the hose exploded with gallons of water.

All of a sudden I had a pool pump and a pressure washer. This was a rare opportunity to clean off my patio, so I dragged that water-breathing dragon to the far side of the patio near the yard, then steadily sprayed the dust off the concrete towards the half-empty pool. Within five minutes, I pushed the muddy waterfall over the pool wall.

It was pretty fun. I wish I had friends over because we could’ve squirted each other or played rodeo games. But it was just me standing in the dark of the night, dripping wet and satisfied that something was about to finally change. The greenish brown water would soon be gone.

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I told myself that when I grew up, I’d buy a house with a pool, and then drain it so I could use it exclusively for skateboarding. I thought about the girls that I wanted sitting on the edge watching me and my friends do cool tricks. What could be better in life? This fantasy was not my own. It was modeled after the opening scene of thee 1991 skateboarding movie Gleaming the Cube with Christian Slater. I envied the rowdy teenagers that had enough courage to find an empty pool in their home town and claim it as their own little skate park. I knew I could never be that reckless with someone else’s home, but converting my own swimming pool into a skating pool would work.

Here was my chance, and I couldn’t do it. My friend Jeff warned me early in the project that the plaster could be damaged if I took too long to fill the pool back up with water. If the plaster was that sensitive to fresh air, I can’t imagine it could’ve held up to the abuse of a skateboard. I could damage the plaster and then have to pay some company $3000 to redo the whole thing. It’s a lot easier for me to go to a skate park five miles from my house. Or maybe take the $3000 saved and start a real skate park on the other side of my yard (sometime not now.)

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With each new day of adulthood, I realize there are inescapable chores that will follow me through every year of life. For most of the years since college, I’ve hoped that if I could just get done with my current to-do list, a new life of leisure or adventure–my pick–would be ready for me the next day. Since this new life has yet to happen, I realize I need to adjust my attitude.

So last night I pulled my humble garden hose from the wall and stretched it to the edge of the empty pool. It was a gentle moment after such a dramatic week of work and worry. Just for fun, I walked down the pool steps and sat in the shallow end to watch the deep end slowly fill with fresh water. I laid down and looked up at the autumn stars through the palm trees. I just laid there, quiet, enjoying the solitude. I laughed at the thought of me pretending to be a fireman the night before. I smiled knowing that the battle with the pool was over, and it was okay to relax.

This is life, and it’s the only one I have. So I need to enjoy it and appreciate it for what it is.