Build an ark

While my vacation continues, NewMexiKen is mostly recycling older posts. There was a nice mountain rainstorm during the party we attended yesterday, but nothing like this storm that seemed to go biblical on me two years ago today.


An astonishing rainstorm at Casa NewMexiKen this morning around 3. And, by my count, three lightning strikes way too close. You know, “One Mississippi, two Miss … oh damn, that was close.” NewMexiKen really doesn’t like lightning since my house was struck and set on fire in 1995.

Anyway, the rain was falling so fast and furiously I began to wonder if Lowe’s carried gopher wood.1 Then I panicked when I couldn’t remember the conversion from feet and inches to cubits (did we learn that in school?). And would it be OK if I accidentally on purpose forgot to bring two scorpions and two rattlesnakes. (But I did remember I’d only need one New Mexico whiptail.) It was really raining!

But it slowed to nothing much after 25-30 minutes. The arroyo2 next to my house is still running deep and fast, but things are returning to normal otherwise.


1 Genesis 6

  1. Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch.
  2. And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits.

2 “Arroyo” is Spanish for concrete ditch.