Snow Running

So yesterday was Groundhog Day.

In honor of the occasion, TigerBlog would like to quote himself:

TigerBlog understands that not every movie made is trying to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards. In that vein, he's never understood the complete disdain so many people have for the movie "Groundhog Day."

TB saw it in the movies when it came out in 1993, and he's seen it about a thousand times since. It's a perfectly harmless, funny, at times charming, certainly inoffensive movie, and yet there are so many people who flat out hate it.

As an aside, TigerBlog was always confused as a kid by Groundhog Day, as six weeks after Feb. 2 takes you to March 16 (or March 15 in a leap year), which is still winter. He never quite understood the whole "six more weeks of winter" thing. Shouldn't it be more like 10 more weeks of winter if the point is that figuratively speaking spring will be late to arrive?

TB was crushed to learn the whole thing is a sham, at least according to a story he read:The ceremony is largely that: Phil's prediction is determined ahead of time by the Inner Circle, a group who dons top hats and tuxedos and decides in advance what the groundhog will predict.

Still, what could be better than Groundhog Day, a small-town tradition that has such a great little Americana feel to it. Something wholesome, something that hasn't been ruined by commercialism or lack of civility or any of the other ills of contemporary society.

As Phil Connors said: This is one time where television really fails to capture the true excitement of a large squirrel predicting the weather.

Sound familiar? TigerBlog has written that before on Groundhog Day. And before that. And before that.

You  know, like the movie. Get it? Subtle, yes.

Before the movie came out, Groundhog Day was all about anticipating spring. Since then, it's become a reference to something that happens over and over and over - you know, like the way Phil kept living the same day over and over. Maybe that's the biggest tribute to the movie, the way it changed an entire meaning of something.

TB thought he offered that to you each year for Groundhog Day. Instead, this is the first time he's done so since 2017. 

Why didn't he do it the last three years? 

Well, the last two years it's because Feb. 2 fell on the weekend. In 2018, Feb. 2 was a Friday, but TB wrote that day a piece that turned out to be one of his favorites. 

It was about how Princeton was playing Yale in basketball that night, with the men in New Jersey and the women in Connecticut. TB went to the women's game, so the first half of the story was about how he needed to find a fill-in to work with Patrick McCarthy on the radio for the men's game. As it turned out, he recruited Patrick's father, Tom, who was Princeton's men's basketball and football play-by-play man early in his long and wildly successful career. 

Having Tom and Patrick have a chance to do a game together was pretty special.

TB, for his part, went to the women's game because TigerBlog Jr., who was then a junior at Sacred Heart, was the public address announcer for the Yale women and TB wanted to see how he did. It was also a special night for him (even if Yale won that game).

Also, speaking of things that happen over and over and over again, there's women's cross country coach Brad Hunt. As TB wrote last week, it appears that Hunt has run at least three miles a day, every day, without missing a day, for 15 years. That's more than 5,500 days.

There was a coaches' Zoom meeting Monday, during the storm, and Mollie Marcoux Samaan asked Hunt if on days like that he ran inside on a treamdmill. Nope, Hunt said. He's outdoors, no matter what.

In fact, he said that running outside in the snow is some of the best running there is. 

That's amazing stuff. That takes a lot of mental fortitude and toughness.

TB is very, very impressed. 

Anyway, yesterday was Groundhog Day. Ol' Punxsutawney Phil apparently saw his shadow, which means six more weeks of winter. As TB said above, that also means an early spring, right? 

It's all very confusing.