P E Y C R W

TigerBlog went to the eye doctor yesterday, something he does once each year.

It's always the same routine. Take off the glasses and read the chart. Look through the machine that has the two eye holes and then the lenses that change to see how bad TB's eyes have gotten from one year to the next.

This is always a tricky one for TigerBlog. He's trying to keep his eyes open as wide as he can so that the machine gets the right reading and he gets the right prescription.

And then there's the whole "which looks sharper, this one or this one?" where the differences are so subtle. TB is always afraid he'll say the wrong answer and end up with glasses that make everything worse, not better.

When TB gets new glasses, he prefers to get them essentially the same as his previous ones, though there's always a part of him that wants to go down the Buddy Holly path, though he never has. These days, he chooses only the Nike frames, out of respect to Nike's relationship with Princeton Athletics.

When the eye test part is over, there's the joy of the eye drops, three separate squirts that all sting worse than the one before it. Then it's a series of bright lights shining in your eyes - or the blue laser-like one that gets pushed up against the eyeball.

Ultimately, it's about a 15-minute wait until TB's pupils are completely dilated, so that the last tests can be conducted. And then, when TB walks outside, he feels like he's standing on the sun, the light is so bright.

TB's eye doctor - Dr. Hudecheck - is super cool. She always relates stories of the latest trip that she and her husband have taken, most recently to go scuba diving in the Galapagos Islands and hiking in Machu Picchu, with a trip to France on the horizon.

TB was lucky to make it to his 30s before he needed glasses. Now? He can hardly see without them.

Little Miss TigerBlog, as she is in most things, is far ahead of her dad, though this unfortunately also includes the area of getting glasses, something she's had since she was about 7 or so.

She has started to wear them when she plays lacrosse, under her eye goggles, to help her catch the ball. It's a look that led TB to ask Chris Sailer, the women's lacrosse coach at Princeton, if any of her players have ever done the same, and she said no.

LMTB will be one of the ballgirls tonight when Penn comes to Sherrerd Field at Class of 1952 Stadium for a huge women's lacrosse game. LMTB's team will be out in force, and they had a random draw to see who would get to be the ballgirls.


With only three league games remaining, the Ivy women's lacrosse race is in a fairly complex place right now, including the possibility of a five-way tie for the championship between Princeton, Penn, Dartmouth, Cornell and Harvard.

In addition to Princeton-Penn, the other games left are Dartmouth-Harvard and Cornell-Brown.

For Princeton, the basics are somewhat simple. A loss tonight eliminates the Tigers from the Ivy League tournament, and even if Princeton gets a tie for the championship, it could not host the league tournament.

On the other hand, a win tonight puts the Tigers in the tournament, regardless of anything else. At least TB thinks that's the case. Yeah, he's pretty sure.

The big difference between the tiebreakers for the women's tournament and the men's tournament is that the women's side has goal differential as a criteria, whereas the men do not. TB, as an aside, hates goal differential, because of the obvious incentive to run up scores, though he's not a huge fan of the random draw either (to determine ballgirls, it's fine; to determine postseason bids, not so much).

A Princeton win tonight would bring the Tigers to 5-2 in the league. If Dartmouth beat Harvard or Brown beat Cornell, then only three or four teams could get to 5-2 and Princeton would be in. If the five-way tie came about, then Princeton would be in through the tiebreakers, including possibly goal-differential.

And so it's a simple night for Princeton. Win and be in.

It should be a great game.

And if nothing else, you can root for the ballgirls.