Coming up for air

It's been two months since I last wrote anything that I actually wanted to write. I slightly modified the blog description and added a cutesy old picture of me at Lake Huron. I'm being a bit cheeky in declaring that I'm a 2nd year already, as I still have to pass prelims, but I'm trying on optimism for once just to see how it feels. I've been mired in papers, papers, and still one more paper (extra credit for Neuro - due Friday) - mostly trying to appease Dr. Dick. My prelims are the first week in June: Bacteriology on the 4th, Immunology on the 6th, and Virology on the 8th. Each is a one-hour oral exam, so I have to sit in the department library trying to field questions lobbed at me from three committee members (a different set of three faculty for each oral exam). Unfortunately, Dr. Dick is one of these committee members. I'm not sure how to study for this, while not neglecting my classes or research. I will have to figure this out - and soon. I'm a little afraid my efforts to study will look something like this:

Cock blocked (or should it be pussy blocked??)

Much has happened since I wrote last - I had a birthday in March (meh), my 10th wedding anniversary (and 20th (!!) dating anniversary) in April, and went to lunch at Mercury Burger Bar with the other grad students last month as well. This place is literally in the shadow of the old Michigan Central Depot in Corktown. MCD is really quite an eerie, imposing, yet hauntingly beautiful sight - the picture doesn't do it justice:

Mercury Burger Bar and Michigan Central Depot

Oddly enough, we went to lunch here two days after some kid climbed into an open window on the first floor and fell straight down 30 or 40 feet to the basement. Having seen it in person, I can absolutely see why it attracts "urban explorers". The place is so massive and it was so opulent in its heyday; my dad was around two years old when it opened in 1913. I really can't help but imagine a time when Detroit was young and held so much promise; this area would've been humming with the activity of so many people passing through this train depot - to visit family and see the big city, or maybe to go off to war.
Anyway, about Mercury Bar: they have good burgers, a very busy lunch hour (and correspondingly slow service), and the best garlic french fries I have ever had. I have dreamt about these fries, they were so good.
Enough for now. More in less than two months. Maybe.