No, Seriously. Go the Fuck Away.

My house flooded tonight - just a little. But we had this really major rainstorm at around 10:30 (Kirsten and I were already in bed; thank heavens the hailstorms woke me up) and it overwhelmed the storm drain system in the neighborhood. So I'm downstairs looking to unplug Kirsten's computer and I hear this rushing water noise - I open the door between the basement and den to see....rushing water.

I woke Kirsten up and lickety-split we managed to lift everything in the laundry room and the vicinity of the basement/den door from the ground (including my computer, which currently sits on my desk chair). Then I grabbed the shop vac and started sucking.

With the shop vac.

Luckily, the rain stopped long enough to allow the drains to clear and the basement drain started to help with the process, allowing the water to trickle down into the storm drains again and out of the house.

I bleached the floor in the basement and we're busily soaking up the water from the carpet near the door on the den side - we've gone through three rolls of paper towels so far, but things are looking up. And as far as I know, this was just storm sewer water - it wasn't sludgy like sanitary sewer water, so that's good. All in all, a close call was avoided for certain.

We're placing a call to the insurance agent to get sewer backup protection tomorrow. Anyone looking at buying a house: you aren't protected if the sewers back up, and you aren't allowed to sue the city or other local government (Act of God). BUY SEWER INSURANCE.