Baby Got Back

I recently had a really great day, followed by a not so great day.  The highlights of the great day were being asked to review something and hearing that my input was useful, and then explaining the meaning behind one of my favorite songs ever – “Baby Got Back” – to my coworkers.  I think it's fair to say they were all greatly impressed with my lyrical aptitude.  

Music has been a great cultural bridge for me in Mexico and I fully appreciate that one of my coworkers loves to listen to English-language songs from years past.  The day of the great Baby Got Back episode, I also got to hear In Da Club, Whip It, Stayin Alive, I Kissed a Girl, and One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer playing from his computer.  The next week he said that his millennial-age wife couldn’t believe he found someone else who liked his music, and then we had a discussion about how we both thought that the Backstreet Boys were a cheap imitation of the great kings, New Kids on the Block.  It’s great to find a generational counterpart to share your music memories with for sure.
FYI - if you weren't around in the late 80s, you really need to watch that New Kids on the Block video to understand what we grew up with - and to learn how to properly dance in a group.   

This was my view on the walk home before the rain hit - looking north.

The low point of the not so great day was having my apartment inundated with rain water.  I am sad to report that when we get monsoon-style rains with winds, water can enter through every closed window on the west-side of my house.  I was sitting on the couch when I noticed a shimmer on the floor and then saw that it was an inch of water and that more water was cascading down the wall.  For the next two hours, I ran from room to room with towels, a mop and a bucket performing triage on the small rivers that gushed from the bottom of every window.  Each puddle reached half-way across the room in the front entry, living room, and laundry room.  Thankfully, the window in the kitchen is over the sink so it took care of itself.  I learned that my tile floors are really slippery when covered in water and I was slipping and sliding with arms flailing, with all the grace you can imagine.

Rain pounding the window.

I wrung out this towel roughly 6 times in 2 hours.

My neighbor's corn, taken out by heavy rains.

Luckily, that corn bounced back when things dried out and it now towers above the clothes on the laundry line.

The next day, the sun was out until around 2:30 when round two of our monsoons hit and my apartment walls housed small waterfalls for the second day in a row.  Thankfully, it wasn’t as bad as the previous day, but my hands were wet and shriveled from mopping and ringing out wet things all day.  If you’ve ever been swimming with me, you know that I don’t handle shriveled, wet fingers well.  It took days for my towels to dry after the storms, but at least I live on the second floor and was spared from the street flooding you can see in the photos below. 

Facebook photos showing local flooding after 2 hours of intense rain.

My apartment has flooded two more times since then, and the other day I felt water dripping on me from my bathroom ceiling during a major thunderstorm, so it appears that flooding will be an ongoing challenge.  This week I took off with a coworker for a meeting 40 minutes away and we had to dodge around 10 rockslides on the 2-lane mountain highway, one of which was so fresh that he had to exit the car to help move rocks and make the road passable.  

So, yeah, life has been extra exciting here lately.  While I appreciate getting to feel a little bit like I'm back in the Pacific Northwest, I'd appreciate it even more if all that rain could stay outside and those rocks could stay put.

 Another Seattle-like rainy day, with lots of rocks on the road.

My coworker left our car to help remove these rocks so cars could pass in one lane.

 I took this image from someone else's Facebook post to show a rockslide on the road heading to the coast (on the same day as our smaller rockslides heading inland).

Another Facebook photo showing the road to the coast. Let's hope this gets fixed soon as no traffic could pass yesterday.