Moving Days

Once again, TigerBlog wants to thank Zack DiGregorio for the great job he did yesterday with his recap of Jason Garrett's Starfish Camp at Princeton from this past weekend.

One thing TB would add is to second what Zack wrote, which is that hearing Jason tell the "Story of the Starfish" is extraordinary, no matter how many times you've heard it.

TB wrote yesterday that he had to get Zack to write about the camp and he'd share with you today why that was so. The reason is that he had to take a bit of a side excursion to Ohio to "help" his daughter move from one apartment to another.

And by "help," he means that he did all the heavy lifting while she went to work. He told her to make sure everything was packed, and he would move it by himself. It seemed like a smoother way to do things. 

To accomplish this, Miss TigerBlog rented a U-Haul van, one that TB went to pick up first thing in the morning. When he got there, he was next in line, though the wait lasted longer than he envisioned it might have.

Why? Because there was a man at the counter who was having an extended, and for his part a rather unfulfilling, conversation with the U-Haul guy. The issue? The man had rented his truck online but didn't have the credit card he used, and the U-Haul guy would not give him his truck without it. 

Back and forth they went, neither willing to budge. TB, for his part, understood the policy, and he respected the way U-Haul guy was keeping his composure while not moving at all. 

While he waited, TB noticed a display with a product called the "Forearm Forklift," which presumably makes it easier to carry heavy items. There was a picture on the front of two people, a man and a woman, who had the aforementioned Forearm Forklift in use as they carried an industrial sized dryer. 

Eventually, a resolution was reached. U-Haul guy cancelled the original reservation and made a new one, and no-credit card guy used his debit card to pay for it — though not before he had to pay a cancellation fee. 

Now it was TB's turn at the counter, and of course the first thing he said was that he had rented a van online but he didn't have his credit card with him. Would that be a problem? Everyone in the store laughed except U-Haul guy, at least at first.

It took three trips to move all of MTB's stuff between the two apartments, which are about 15 minutes apart. It took a little more than six hours in all. 

That was the first of his two moving experiences of late. The other one was yesterday morning, when he moved from his existing office into a different one in the same office suite. In all, this will be his fifth office at Princeton, running his career numbers to five different offices and 11 different titles.

In fact, the suite on the Jadwin E Level has six offices in all, and TB will now have set up shop in three of them. 

TB doesn't have much stuff in his office. He is the opposite of a hoarder. There were, though, a bunch of things on his desk and his bookshelves that he hadn't gone through in a while. 

There are also a few boxes filled with old photos of Princeton Athletics through the years. They've been sitting on his floor for a few years, and TB always says he needs to go through them. One day he will.

He glanced at them a bit yesterday. Just doing that took him back to a lot of memories. He's not sure he'll be able to go through all the boxes, since just looking at a handful of those pictures took longer than moving all his stuff.

He'd say he was at about 90 percent of the games represented on the games in the boxes. Each of the pictures he picked up brought him back to that game day and made him remember a certain detail or two about them. Once he gets fully immersed in them, he'll be in there for days. 

Oh, and one more thing about moving, from the one in Ohio. MTB had the usual kind of stuff, and her old apartment was filled with bags and clothes and furniture and all. Some of it was heavy. Most of it wasn't. 

At one point, he moved two big plastic bags with bedding in them. When he picked them up, he noticed a few things underneath them that he hadn't realized were there. 

Among them? There were two lacrosse sticks, both with "Princeton" on the side, and her old Princeton lacrosse goggles.

They were a reminder of what his daughter did in her four years at Princeton to get to the position she now has. TB smiled when he saw them, with a combination of pride and awe.