"Show me a good loser and I'll show you a loser." - Vince Lombardi

Politico.com had a story with the headline, "How do you solve a problem like Ivanka?" For those of you unfamiliar with it, that's a play on (see what I did there?) a song from Leonard Bernstein's musical West Side Story. The female lead is a character named Maria. It's a great musical, one of the best of that genre and a retelling of Romeo and Juliette. In this case Shakespeare's feuding families, the Capulets and Montagues, are replaced by two warring gangs on the streets of N.Y.C. -the Sharks (Puerto Rican) and the Jets (Caucasian). Tony, from the Sharks, falls in love with the Puerto Rican girl, Maria.

One of the better known songs from the musical is, "How do you solve a problem like Maria?" When I saw that Politico headline that tune got stuck in my head and led me to think of other classics from that musical, like "There's a place for us," "Maria," (I just met a girl named Maria...), "Tonight, Tonight", and "I feel pretty." So I've had those earworms in my head all day.

We're not going to the Eugene Concert Choir performance tonight, but I sort of wish we were. The choir will be joined by the Eugene Symphony Orchestra and perform Beethoven's "Mass in C" and Bernstein's "Chichester Psalms." A lot more people know Bernstein's "West Side Story" than his "Chichester Psalms," but I know the latter from doing it with the Riverside (CA) Concert Choir that I was part of back in the 80's. When we first started rehearsing it I didn't like it; it's fairly modern. But by the time we performed it several weeks later I'd changed my mind.

So, it's been a Bernstein weekend.
If you get the chance and haven't ever seen it you should catch a performance of West Side Story, even if it's done by a H.S. music and drama department. It really is good. But go ahead and skip "Chichester Psalms."

I wrote the above early this morning. It's now just about dinnertime and I'm spent. At 8 a.m. I was at U-Haul picking up a trailer that I took to Lowe's to get four sheets of drywall, four sheets of shower board, and a couple of 2x4's. On the way home I stopped by the feed store and got a bale of alfalfa. Once home I went right to work and, with a short break for lunch, had the shower trailer walls drywalled. I needed to get that done because it's supposed to rain for the next several days (surprise!) and much of this work had to be done outside. I cut it in the garage and took it out to the trailer for installing, making adjustments on the deck. The 1/8" shower board will get cut to size and glued to the drywall, and because it's waterproof I can work through at least a light rain.I hope to have this project all done by mid-week so the trailer can be taken away.

I had hoped to get the Mustang's engine bay pressure washed today but by the time I was done with the drywall (lots of tricky cuts to match curved corners and weird angles) I was wasted and fully feeling the effects of this cold. My congestion seems to have settled in my ears, so I have a constant sound like a high wind and can't hear well at all. Pam, who also has a cold, has a sore throat and can't talk normally, so there's not a lot of communication going on here. I don't know what she thinks, but if I'm not feeling a lot better by tomorrow morning I'm staying home from church.