boggled

I read an interesting article today about blood-doping by athletes--they have blood transfusions to increase the amount of oxygen in their blood. Gross? There's more! One athlete is claiming that his blood tests showing two different blood types is not evidence of blood-doping, but, rather, due to a vanishing twin that his embryo absorbed in the womb. ewwww. Just the thought of an embryo...absorbing...another embryo gives me the heebie-jeebies.

The phemomena is called chimerism, and the humans exhibiting them, chimeras. This is amusing to me because the word "chimera" had always conjured up in my mind its other definitions: an illusion, or a mythical fire-breathing Greek monster with a lion's head and a goat's body. Like the winged ones on top of the columns in St. Mark's square in Venice.

I leave for Hong Kong in sixteen days. This time though, I'm not going with friends--I will pretty much be alone in the city the whole time. I wonder who I'll meet this summer. I wonder what my future friends are like. It's so delicious to sit and think about the sights I have yet to see in the next few months. Will I really see the sunrise over Angkor Wat? Will I be able to schedule a trip to Saigon to visit the house my parents grew up in? Will I travel back to Phi Phi to lend a helping hand in the tsunami relief?

I just ate half of a 4-day old pizza. oh, the heartburn, the heartburn....