Noah & His Ark -- also known as a redhead and her shop-vac

So-
For those of you that do not spend hours perusing either weather.com or watching the latest, greatest SUPER-MEGA-UBER-MINE-IS-BETTER-THAN-YOURS Doppler radar, it has been raining here in Des Moines.
For three days
A lot.
Rain
Rain
Rain.

So, as mentioned in the previous post -- today even -- I moved into a house recently.
A older house. Full of charm and character, and as fate would have it a rather blocked main line between said charming house and the city drainage system.
So Monday night (Tuesday? All the days are running together), I went down to check the basement.
Side note: basement is unfinished and only has the kitty bathroom and some storage in it.
Noticed a little bit of water. Nothing major, so clean up and go along with my night.
fast forward to yesterday morning
wait, is that possible?? Never mind.
Yesterday morning, as I was leaving for work, I thought to myself:
"Self, I should go check the basement as it rained all night"
Well, a few steps down and the reality of my world hit me like a 10 foot wave at high tide.
My basement -- all roughly 1000 sq. feet of it -- was covered in about 2-3" of water.
AWESOME.
Quite a site to behold before I have had coffee.
My immediate thought was -- "I have pissed someone in the cosmos off"
And then one of my cats came dashing down the steps, ran through the water and decided it was a cool toy -- you could SPLASH it.
For the record, never seen a cat do that. But there she was -- Boris playing in the water.
And yes, it was clean water. Don't even want to think about the other option.
Now keep in mind a few things:
A. It was STILL raining outside.
2. I was wearing dress clothes.
III. I had a TON of meetings all morning.
Four. I am not the owner of any giant suction devices that could somehow rid my basement of all the aforementioned water.

So, I decided on a course of action. I called the landlord, left a VM, got in my car, got my coffee went to work and decided that over lunch (after my many important meetings) I would go to Lowe's or whatever the mega-home store is down the street from the office, buy a shop-vac and commence in the cleaning.

So fast forward to noon. Buy shop-vac and shop-vac accessories. Easy how quickly THAT adds up.
Head home.
Change clothes
And begin.

I found out something very quickly. When you have that much water, filling a 16 gallon shop-vac takes about a minute and a half. Carrying said shop-vac up the stairs -- like 10 minutes and that was with half of it spilling all over me.
Good times.
Good, shop-vac times.
So, plan B.
Position shop-vac at top of stairs. Find duct tape. Secure extension tube to end of shop-vac.
Suck out water.
This worked. So there I was, sitting on my steps, emptying the damn thing roughly every 2 minutes and lost count of how many I had filled somewhere after 18.
All the while, not noticing ANY change in the water levels in the basement.
Oh yeah - I did move the litter boxes upstairs to avoid any accidents.

So, its like 5PM - I have been at this for several hours. Still haven't heard from the landlady. Back is getting tired. Hands are sore and not a single part of me is dry.
Oh, and its still raining.
Then I get a message from a friend who is in a similar position. Except he has carpet.
Now THAT sucks.
And the landlord calls. Finally.
So she comes over. Takes one look and is like, if you hadn't been working all day, it would kinda be funny.
Yeah. Freakin' hysterical. My sides hurt from laughing so hard.
She then says, no, not a leak. It has to be the main drain that is backed up. I will call my guy.
So, at that point, I am wet, cold and beat up. And I stop with the shop-vac
STEP AWAY FROM THE SHOP-VAC
Cue the bottle of wine.
Check.
So, I made dinner, had some wine, hung out with Martine. Watched the most ridiculous American Idol elimination show EVER and finally around 7:30ish, knock on the door.
The sewer/plumber guy.
Goes down to the basement, takes one look around, says "Yep, seen about 5 houses with this tonight."
Goes out to his truck, grabs a PLUNGER, plunges the drain, does something else in the other room and low and behold, just like you were in the tub, you can see the swirling vortex of water draining down.
He then comments on the tattoo on my foot -- he liked it -- tells me it will need to drain overnight, but that should take care of it and left.
10 minutes from start to finish.
10 minutes.
I spent 4.5 hours with the damn shop-vac lifting, dumping, getting wet and it took him 10 minutes.
I am in the wrong industry.
Or I need a guy around the house. But that is another entry.

So this morning, most of the water was gone, the dove came back with the olive branch indicating land was nearby and now I just have to clean up and throw away all the boxes that are totally trashed.
And I am sore. Massage on Monday totally went to waste.
So -- lets hope no more rain.
And if not, well I have a $4 plunger and a $200 shop-vac. I am all set.