The Cure For A Bad Mood

TigerBlog walked outside yesterday morning, and the spring weather was already perfect. 

Then he stopped off in a store, where he was the second one on line at the checkout. The cashier said to the man in front of him "have a nice day," to which the man responded "you have a better one."

How nice was that? That comment lifted TB's morning spirits even higher. 

And then? He was driving into Princeton when he came to the point where 206 heads to the left at Nassau Street. The lane to go straight onto Nassau Street was blocked by a broken down van with a tow truck already there, so everyone in that lane had to move over into the other one. 

It was all going smoothly until TB pulled over and heard honking. When he looked in his rearview mirror, he saw a driver who was gesturing wildly at him. 

It didn't cause TB any road rage. More like "road confusion." Where did she want him to go? Wasn't it obvious what was going on? 

Anyway, that did take his spirits down a few levels. Leave it to Joe Dubuque to bring them back up.

The head coach of wrestling at Princeton came into TB's office to introduce his new head assistant coach, Cody Brewer. As Dubuque introduced Brewer, he asked TB when the next entry with him in it would be, suggesting that nothing drives blog traffic quite like a mention of Dubuque.

TB assured him that it would be today, and so here he is. 

Dubuque is a definite, 100 percent can't miss cure for someone's flipping you off on Nassau Street. That's for sure. 

As for Brewer, TigerBlog didn't know anything about him, other than he certainly looks the part of a wrestling coach, and, presumably, a pretty good wrestler before that. As it turns out, he is all of that.

Brewer coached at Virginia Tech and Northwestern before this, and as an undergrad he was the 2015 NCAA champion at 133 pounds. He came into the event as the 13 seed and then won five straight matches, including taking down the top seed 15-3 in the semifinals and the third seed 11-8 in the final. 

The third seed, by the way, was named Cory Clark and he was from Iowa. Two years later, in 2017, Clark won an NCAA title of his own.

TB hopes he enjoyed his few years as making a claim to being the best "Clark" from Iowa until Caitlin came along. Are the two Clarks related? TB can't find anything to suggest they are, but they did grow up 14 miles apart from each other. 

With TB's mood now much back on the positive side, he saw an envelope on his desk, one of those inter-University envelopes that he used to get all the time and now gets once a year or so. These are the envelopes that are sealed with the red piece of string that winds around the two red circles, and the front has different spaces to cross out the last person who had it and add the next address. 

This envelope came to Jadwin Gym from Firestone Library. Before that, it was at the East Asian Library, 693 Alexander, 226 Alexander and originally at Firestone Library. Presumably, TigerBlog will cross out his name and send it off to someone else, even though he hasn't had to send something through the University mail system in years. 

What was in the envelope? 

It was a book entitled "The Princeton University Trivia Book." TB's mood, which Dubuque had rescued, was now even better.

What could be better than a Princeton University trivia book for TB, whose title includes the word "historian?" How about being in the acknowledgements as one of the book's selected sources, from TB's own "I Can Do Anything, Stories From The First 50 Years Of Women's Athletics At Princeton."

The trivia book was compiled by Helene Van Rossum and TB's longtime friend and University archivist  Daniel J. Linke. 

If you're interested, you can order it HERE. It'll be available on Amazon starting next month.

The book is divided into eight sections: History, Student Life, Princeton Culture, Learning and Teaching, People, Extracurricular, Around Campus and Fun Facts. 

Trust TigerBlog on this. You'll absolutely love it.