Friday Wrap-Up / Anyone Seen That Lion?

While setting up the Version 3.0 pages, I had dozens of ideas and things I wanted to write about here. Now that the time has come for all my ideas to roam free, what's happened? You guessed it, they've all gone AWOL. Well, not all of them. Here's a couple major points:

1. As a rule, I don't drink coffee. I've always said that I'll wait until it's absolutely necessary to start my hardcore caffeine addiction. Like when I'm 40. I've survived so far on drinking soft drinks when I need a bit of a drug-induced energy kick. Actually, I've even found that drinking water during the morning hours can be more refreshing, and a good bit healthier, than chugging a 20 oz. bottle of pop (and yes, it is called pop).

Today, however, with very little sleep to back me up, I raised the Caffeine Emergency Level to Glowing Red and headed down to the cafeteria for some java. According to the label on my cup, this coffee "delivers a taste worth discovering." It wasn't half-bad, but I had to add to that taste with some sugar.

Caffeine Emergency Levels lowering... lowering..gooooone.

2. This happened late last week, but apparently Antoine Yates, a resident of Harlem, had been living in his apartment with a freaking tiger and alligator. He got partially mauled by the tiger as he was protecting a housecat from the beast and was hospitalized for his trouble. The police came to investigate reports from an anonymous source, who was concerned that there was a tiger in the building. Yes, with a 400-pound cat next door banging around on stuff, I'd be a little worried! One of New York's finest rappelled down the side of the apartment building to tranquilize the kitty in a commando operation. Yates was sent to jail (but later released, because apparently he's nuts), and the animals were sent to an exotic animal sanctuary in Ohio.

The only thing I can really say about this is: only in New York. (But even that's not entirely true, because apparently selling wild animals as pets to people is a big business.)

The last I heard, this guy had a lion somewhere else in the city, too. Oh my.