tltr

One of my cousins and I like to bicker a lot. Most of our interactions consist of mocking each other for fun though unfortunately, I think he has a lot more embarrassing stories to make fun of me with.

I don't remember exactly what we were texting about - maybe discussing which laptop I should buy to replace my old one or the crazy price increases in external hard drives after some Thailand floods hit manufacturers hard - but at one point, I must have text/ranted.

His response: "tltr"

At first, I was like did he sit on his phone and texted me by accident?

Then, pathetically, I went to google what tltr stood for just in case it was one of those newfangled text speech.

It was. Urban Dictionary revealed tltr = "too long to read".

Stupid cousin.

My response: "sorry you're illiterate."

And that's how part of Adel's text conversation with her brother, Adam, came about.

Other sparkling texts I've exchanged with cousin:

Him: can i come over bored
Me: you can come hang with bro. cramming until dinner tonight.
Him: u should just wing it
Me: I wing you!
Him: Wing isn't a verb
Me: You just used it as a verb. Ohhh winged.

Random Food Photo to bring flavor to this post:

One good thing about cousin though is he can be a really handy garbage disposal. We were at a Japanese food buffet and I, overestimating my gut, ordered one too many rolls. And the thing is the rolls look better in picture than in reality. They had mixed in some fried tempura batter in with the fish in the center, but something about the oil was really heavy and tasted horrible. I couldn't stomach it and was literally breaking out into a sweat, getting a tad nauseous. I felt especially bad because cousin was treating and I expected to just pay the extra fee myself for not finishing the rolls.

However, cousin finished his plates and simply reached out for mine after I ate all the raw fish lying on top of the rolls like sashimi. Even though the remaining rolls were really bad, he still claimed he could finish it all, saying it was no problem at all. And he did. By breaking it down, grain by grain, separating the mass of pink fried concoction in the center, and forcing all of it down. It was simultaneously hilarious and touching because I thought it was so cool of him to just shovel it down for me, taste buds of steel.

So yeah, I suppose he's one of my favorite cousins.

Even though he's still an illiterate fool who should really stop making fun of me.

Through Me Chapter 30

Through Me Chapter Thirty has finally been posted! The end, at last.

I'm so sorry about the ridiculously glacial speed I've been updating this story with, but thank you all so, so much for continuing to support me and the story.

Been sitting on this chapter for a while now. My cousin had started to despair of ever seeing it posted up. I'm still not sure why I took so long to put this up, but I do have 63 pages of TM outtakes at the end of this all so maybe it was because I still wanted to continue revamping it or maybe subconsciously, I just didn't want this to end haha. 

Or maybe! I'm just really scared of more plagiarists popping up now that TM is fully completed. Plagiarism has totally left a bad taste in my mouth. I will destroy you if you steal my stories, including those of you who have stolen the basic outline, edited scenes and lines to try to paraphrase your way out of outright verbatim. You know who you are. I'm glad you've decided to edit your story so it reads less like False Facades now, but I was really furious in the beginning. Decided not to call you out on it because it looks like some readers have picked up similarities since they took the time to alert me and you seemed to be aware that you needed to back up that road fast and fix up your story so the plot is more of your own. Hope you continue to work at it. To others who are contemplating doing the same, you won't be so lucky.

Anyway, as to the tltr part (tltr is short for "too long to read") which you'll get to at the end of this last chapter, I'll probably blog the background story that served as inspiration for the exchange tomorrow or so. It's not much of a story, actually, but based on some of your responses to my previous blog posts, I think some of you guys are surprisingly interested in reading how dorky I am.

It's been a while since I updated this blog as well so I wanted to say: I'm alive! Happy Very Belated New Year 2012! And hope you all recently had a great Memorial Day weekend for those of you in the U.S.

Everything's been going well. Got Step 1 (one of the first medical licensing exams) over with a while back and that went well too. Will blog more about phlebotomy training and clerkships.

This is a bad habit of mine, but I think I've been avoiding the blog until I finally finished TM 30 so I could update with happy news at last, but now that it's done and over with, I should be able to blog more with no guilty conscious lurking over me! Granted, they'd probably be more random ramblings, but at least, you guys won't be left wondering if I'd collapsed into a black hole or something.

So thanks for following Through Me and I hope you all have enjoyed this supremely lengthy time with Tristan, Adel, and the rest of the gang.

You're the best!

P.S. To the random people who have been sending me repeated requests to purchase the rights to False Facades for $199, my answer is no. Thanks for the offers, but no.

To all others who have sent me reviews and PMs that I haven't gotten back to yet, I'm sorry! I'll try to go through them as soon as possible.

Baby

Wow, way overdue for a post. So sorry, had been studying and all. I hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving!

This year, we decided to host a Thanksgiving potluck for the family, but since our oven had been broken for a while now (like years), we had the genius idea to just throw the turkey into the barbeque outside rather than dice the bird up for soup. Hours later, Dad went out in his down jacket to check on it, where we found that the grill had run out of gas. Fortunately, most of the meat was cooked and the skin was nice and crispy, but the wings were still raw and had to be stuck in a wok to be cooked some more. Because them giant wings would not fit in our teeny toaster oven.

And that's how we roll for family holidays.

The next chapter of Through Me is still ... in the works. I had intended to finish it once and for all for cousin's birthday, but that didn't happen. She wasn't very happy. She's still not so happy. As I can imagine, you guys might be in a similar state. Sorry! I'll try my best to finish it for the holidays.

Also, remember how I said I'd include more interesting pictures with my posts now that I got my amazing smartphone? Except it's been several months now and I can safely estimate that 99% of my camera photos are of my cousin's children. Baby obsession! As much as I'd love to plaster this blog with pictures of baby sleeping, baby feeding, baby yawning, baby smiling, baby crying, baby skeptical face, baby omg stop freaking me out with that phone already, I'm not sure that you all and baby's mom might appreciate that. So I'd just offer one Kodak moment:

Alright, maybe just one more:

Oh, the agony of being so beautiful.

It's like the kid has this built in defense mechanism against me. Whenever I visit her, two times out of three, she'd be napping. It's like she knows when I'm coming for her. Well, newsflash to her, just because she can face plant whenever I try to snap a picture doesn't mean I can't pick her up and shove my camera into her face eventually. Resistance is futile.