April 29, 2007: We Smell a Rat… errr Mouse

Quote of the Day is from Rabelais: “Science without conscience is the soul’s perdition.”

I slept in until seven this morning (I didnt’ think that I would ever say that.) This is how you can tell that I am getting older. I spent some time working on homework while Dominica was still sleeping. I have a bit of work that needs to be done today. Dominica has homework to do as well but not as much as I do.

At nine thirty we walked down to the Robert Treat and met dad for breakfast. We decided to just have the breakfast buffet in the hotel. That would be a mistake. No wonder no one can get into the brunch buffet at the Theater Square Grill without reservations – the Robert Treat really does not understand wat hotel dining is supposed to be like. The Robert Treat has Maize which is supposed to be one of the few high end restaurants in town but we haven’t made it there yet so we can’t tell you for sure. But we ate at the hotel breakfast which was hard to find and required cash not credit – in a “luxury” hotel? This was very strange. It was actually an extremely poor and somewhat overpriced breakfast not nearly competing with a diner, IHOP or any other hotel. It was almost bare with just scrambled eggs, potatoes, French toast, sausage (eww), fruit and one type of roll making up pretty much the entire buffet. And the rolls weren’t very good. It was incredibly weak.

After breakfast we headed back to the apartment and just visited for the day. I worked on homework at RIT too as I have a bit that is due today.

We were all pretty tired and dad needs a bit of rest before driving back home so we decided to leave Newark pretty early to get dad back to his hotel in Tannersville, Pennsylvania. It was around four when we left Newark.

The drive out to Tannersville went by quickly. We had dinner at the Tandoor Palace there in Tannersville connected to the hotel where dad is staying. The food was good. We enjoy eating there from time to time. We got past it quite often.

After eating we said goodbye and Dominica, Oreo and I drove back east to Newark. We spent the evening each working on our homework while Oreo slept some more. He is still very tired.

Right when we got back to our apartment I was walking Oreo down the hall and halfway between the elevators and our apartment door as we rounded the bend in the hall I saw something flash across the floor out of the corner of my eye. Oreo almost stepped on it and if Dominica hadn’t been behind me to get a good look at it I would have thought that my eyes were playing tricks on me. But no such luck… we have rats mice living on our floor 🙁 I have never lived in a building with rats before. In fact I have never seen a rat in the wild before if you can believe that! But it is surprising to have them so high up in a skyscraper like 1180 Raymond Blvd. But there are big spaces beneath the apartment doors so a rat can travel in and out of apartments with ease and there are empty apartments where they can easily live plus locked electric and mechanical rooms as well as the trash room. Every one of these rooms has plenty of open space beneath the doors so that the rats can run at full speed under them making them nearly impossible to catch. So now our door is blocked by a towel in the hopes of dissuading any would be uninvited guests from prowling around our apartment.

[The exterminators came the next day and told us that Newark has giant mice compared to what we are used to and that that was all that it was.  Although for me there is no difference between mice and rats from a “badness” perspective as both are friendly and cute but both carry the same diseases and are just as dangerous from that perspective.  If it wasn’t for the disease factor I wouldn’t worry about them at all.]

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