Philadelphia Adventure - The Fire Alarm

It's 3 am as I write this blog entry and I am wide awake. We discovered something new at Philadelphia's most exclusive living resort the Domus. The in room fire alarms volume control has been set to ludicrous. At about 2:30 in the morning (which is about "The Middle of the Night" Greenwich Normal People Standard Time) our apartment became unlivable as the fire alarm, which is conveniently placed at the head of our bed, began to blare what I will now, and for the rest of my life refer to as my least favorite, most painful sound. I cannot relay how loud and high pitched the blaring alarm actually was. I'm certain everyone within a twelve block radius was under the impression that we were under attack from aliens using a new undiscovered sound wave weapon that makes peoples ears catch on fire. Every time the alarm would sound my ear drums would threaten to burst and my eyes would start to pop out of my head. Laura asked me why there wasn't a strobe light in the room for the deaf people. My response is because I'm sure the deaf people could hear that alarm. Or at least they wake up and notice that their eyeballs keep popping out of their heads and will run down the stair seeking help. My main distress at this insanely loud sound is that while it did alert us, it actually rendered our minds useless. We couldn't figure out what to do at first so we did the only rational thing, zip around each room as fast as we could while asking the other person what to do. Needless to say this whole mess really freaked out our dog. My daughter actually slept through the first few minutes of the alarm. She probably awoke when she realized that she was now hearing the worst song ever.
We finally came too enough to think that maybe we should leave the building. So we strapped our kid to Laura, I grabbed the Dog and we joined the stream of the tired but wealthy as we exited the building. First we were informed that there was no fire. Some kind person decided to yank the fire alarm. Second I noticed that the wealthy in pajama and without the time in the morning to get ready look just like us commoners. I don't know what I really expected to be different, I just thought maybe their pj's would be made of gold or something.
The Fire department arrived and shortly let us back into the building. We were able to get the kiddo back off to sleep by some miracle. Then, the alarm went off again. Laura said "Now that's just mean." which I agree, but I was thinking a whole lot more cuss words.
It is now 9 in the morning. Everyone is dressed and ready for the day...except me. I ended up staying up with my daughter who I guess only needs a few hours of sleep a night. I finally drifted off to sleep in time for the construction workers to show up at 6 am driving the worlds loudest truck up and down the alley outside our window. Anyway, thanks for reading.

Tracy