Feeling Better, Dr. Arkin

TigerBlog's regular doctor looks like his friend Mark Major, who way back when was a hockey player at Cornell.

Mark's promising career, at least according to him, was seriously derailed when he suffered a major knee injury at Baker Rink, something that has caused him to be a tad anti-Princeton. TB has seen the scar on his knee, and he forgives him for not having the greatest relationship with all things Orange and Black.

Somehow - or because his kids have played sports through the years with TigerBlog Jr. and Miss TigerBlog - Mark and TB have managed to put aside their differences, though there has been a lot of back-and-forth about certain Princeton-Cornell matchups.

And of course, there was the time when TB got Mark's son a Princeton Lacrosse hat, only to have him not wear it anyway, which probably was just as good, because he only wears hats backwards anyway.

TigerBlog was sick last week, sick enough to have to call the doctor. Only his regular doctor was out, so he had to go with another doctor in the practice, one he had never met before.

When the doctor came in, TB thought this one, took, looked like someone. In this case, it was someone famous, an actor.

This is something that happens often, at least to TB. He sees someone and realizes that the person looks like someone else, and then it takes a little while to figure out who it is.

In this case, it was almost to the end of TB's visit when it dawned on him. The doctor looked like Alan Arkin.

You know, the actor. The one who won Best Supporting Actor as the grandfather in "Little Miss Sunshine" and was nominated for "Argo" and who was in about 1,000 other things.

Anyway, being sick anytime stinks, but it really stinks in the summer. For some reason, everybody who ever gets sick in the summer talks about how it's so much worse than any other time of year.

Fortunately, TB is back to 100% now.

The summer has reached the same point it does every year around here.

Vacations are for the most part over. Practices haven't yet started.

TB was talking to his friend Todd last week, and he sort of spoke for everyone when he said he was "sick of the beach."

August is a more than a third of the way gone. Exhibition football games are on. Football in general dominates all sports news coverage, between pro and college.

Even though it doesn't seem like that long ago that TB was at the Princeton Varsity Club senior awards banquet last May, it's almost time for the start of a new year.

In fact, there are just 19 days - less than three weeks - until the first athletic event of the 2013-14 academic year, as the women's cross country team competes at the Lehigh Invitational on Aug. 31.

It gets far busier a week later.

The big day is Friday, Sept. 6, when four teams begin their seasons.

The men's soccer team will be at FDU, while the women's volleyball team will at George Mason's tournament.

As for home games, there are two pretty good ones.

The defending Ivy League champion women's soccer team hosts Richmond. The defending NCAA champion field hockey team hosts Duke. Both games are at 6 with no admission charge.

That's Friday, Sept. 6. As in three weeks from this Friday.

That's insane, by the way. But not nearly as insane as how quickly the time will go between now and then.

It always does.

Princeton will be off and running at Lehigh in fewer than three weeks. And then another athletic year will be off and running.

Summer, it appears, will be ending soon.