Back To Work

Imagine waking up one day in a place that you've been for the last 36 years and finding out that your address and zip code are now different.

Twilight Zone stuff, no?

That's what happened to FatherBlog. For the last 36 years, his address has been 570 Seventh Ave. Then, about a year ago, he got a notice that said the new address would be something on 200 West 41st Street, and with a different zip code and everything.

This was despite the fact that his office never changed. It was still on the sixth floor of the same exact building.

FatherBlog was on Fifth Avenue before he moved to Seventh. The address back then was 521 Fifth Ave. Don't ask why TB remembers that.

Anyway, FB was on Fifth Avenue for 17 years, meaning he's spent 53 years between the two locations. That's sort of a long time. TB's memories of 521 Fifth are of a huge lobby, with a bunch of stores in it. There's just a newsstand in the lobby of 570 Seventh, er, 200 West 41st.

TigerBlog's other memory of 521 Fifth was of walking from the Port Authority bus terminal across to Fifth Avenue. The other office, whatever the address, is much closer to the bus terminal and even closer to a parking garage, where TB would park when he went into the city. Parking in New York, by the way, is expensive.

As it turns out, FatherBlog doesn't want to stay in his office, regardless of the address. And 53 years apparently aren't enough time spent working in New York City every day, so he decided to try yet another address. This one will be on West 36th Street, which is good, because it puts him in good proximity to his two favorite lunch places, an Italian restaurant and a kosher deli.

So like TB said, that's 53 years worth of working in New York. That's 53 years worth of fighting traffic at the Lincoln Tunnel every morning. TB couldn't do that. He's annoyed when he misses the light on Route 1 and Washington Road.

TigerBlog had the same office for 21 years here in Jadwin. That's the one that was on the balcony.

He's coming up on two years down in the basement of Jadwin, next to the wrestling room. As they say in the wrestling room, in Jadwin "moving down is moving up."

The Jadwin lobby project is continuing, and it's getting into serious construction mode. There's a large tarp that stretches the length of the mezzanine now to keep the dust, and presumably some of the sound, out of the offices upstairs.

TigerBlog was talking to Brendan Van Ackeren of the Princeton Varsity Club yesterday afternoon, and Brendan said he had to close his office door because of the jackhammer. If the name Van Ackeren is familiar to you as a Princeton fan, it's probably because Brendan is married to Lisa Van Ackeren, the coach of the two-time defending Ivy League champion softball team. The two are expecting their first child next month, though Lisa hardly looks that far along.

There was plenty of noise in TigerBlog's office yesterday afternoon as well.

The women's soccer team was down here for preseason headshots. The arrival of the first team to get its pictures taken is one of the sure signs that summer is winding down.

The women's soccer team starts practicing today in advance of opening day of the 2017-18 Princeton athletic year, which comes up a week from Friday - egads - when the Tigers host Monmouth. Has the summer really zoomed by so quickly?

TigerBlog saw field hockey head coach Carla Tagliente and assistant coach Dina Rizzo as they walked out of the building yesterday morning. They'll start practicing Thursday.

A year ago, in their first season with the Tigers, the two led the team to the NCAA Final Four.

They'll all be back at it soon. Men's soccer. Water polo. Women's volleyball. Football. Cross country.

At the end of the year, TigerBlog will be able to tell you how many games Princeton teams have played. That's easy. It'll be between 600 and 700, like every other year.

The question of how many practices is a little more difficult.

Most teams have four or five practices for each game. Others have fewer. If you take an average of four, say, then that's around 2,500 or so practices for the academic year.

That's when the teaching is done. That's when the competition for playing time occurs. That's when so much of the experience that is playing a sport in college occurs, with everything that goes along with it.

The first one of those for this year is today.