"Is this the Burger King?"

I quit my job today. Well, technically speaking I gave notice today that I was quitting my job. It's not like I told my boss she could go suck it, nothing that dramatic. I work (worked?, well work for the next three weeks anyway) at this super high-tech company in Silicon Valley. We do knowledge representation in the life science field. In a nutshell, we take genomic literature and freely-available digital genomic information and, applying a controlled vocabulary, code it into a inferable relational database...this could be the single most boring sentence I've ever written and I believe I'll abort it now. Now take that sentence and imagine working at it for 5 years. Although, the 45 minute argument about whether the term "erection" represents an object or a process was fun. Nevertheless, I quit today.

So why does a 36-year-old PhD-holding well-paid scientist up and quit? Why, to go to medical school, of course. Yup, that's right. At 36, with 10 years of post-secondary education under my belt and 5 years of experience in biotech, I needed a change and decided that med school was the right prescription for me. I guess most guys would probably just buy a Porsche and bag a trophy wife to quell their misgivings about past decisions. Some might even move to Montana and while away their days eating in fine restaurants, hiking in the wilderness and communing with birds of prey. I call those guys pussies.

This whole idea started about a year-and-a-half ago in a conversation with my buddy PopD. PopD and I worked together until he tragically lost his position in what was termed a "reduction in force". PopD claims the only force reduced in that action was his ability to afford his pay-per-view porn habit. Over the next several months, PopD made mooching food and garage space from me into an art form. During his "man of leisure" phase, we talked a lot about our mutual disdain for the company that I currently and he formerly worked for. He said he was glad to have gotten the boot because it essentially forced him to finally pursue the thing that he has wanted to do his whole life. It was something to do with animals and frankly I forget what exactly and since it's not about me it is therefore not very important. He mentioned a motivational speaker he saw whose whole philosophy was that the only thing that you will be happy doing in life is the one thing you always said you wanted to be when you grew up. So if you were the kid who wanted to be a fireman, you should become one. If you wanted to be head photographer for Hustler, you should pursue that calling and avoid anything that distracts you from that goal. PopD asked me what it was that the child in me wanted to do when I grew up, I told him I wanted to be a physician. You know, with the beneift of hindsight being 20/20, that was a mightly big decision I made there. PopD better know what he's talking about. Come to think of it, good ol' Poppy smokes copious amounts of ganja. Oh well, what's done is done.

So I applied to med school this year and, despite an undergraduate performance that consisted mainly of drinking beer and ditching class and chasing trim, I managed to gain admittance to a medical school in New York City. Classes start August 15th, so between now and then I have to sell my house, sell my car, secure housing in the Big Apple, get my ass to the Big Apple from here, get all the health crap squared away for school, obtain sufficient funding to pay for said school, and a plethora of things I'm sure I haven't even thought of yet. Like cold weather clothing. I just thought of that! I live in goddamned San Fran California. I don't own any cold weather clothing. I do have a silver lame thong that I won at last year's gay pride parade. That metallic cloth will probably keep the sack nice and toasty.

I actually got all my health stuff done already. Except one thing. Apparently I misplaced my immunity to Hepatitis B. When I was working at UC Berkeley, I had to get immunized against Hep B. I went through the whole course of immunization, getting three different inoculations over 3 months and did all the lab tests to ensure that the vaccines took. Everything was fine, I was immune. Now, 7 years later, I have the same labs run and oops, no longer immune. Now I have to do the entire vaccination course over again. How exactly does immunity expire? I thought that was the genius of our immune system. If you've seen it once, you are set for life. I guess not.

But back to the job quitting. I dropped the bomb today and to my surprise, all the upper management jerkoffs were very supportive and happy for me. This will simply not do. It is going to be very difficult to bad mouth these people behind their backs if they insist on being so fucking magnanimous. Seriously, both my boss and the CEO were extremely kind to me and both offered to help any way they could. I asked each of them for 200 large, but I guess that offer of help was mostly symbolic.

So that's about it. Now I have to finish up work and get everything squared away for the big trek to the land where the ocean is on the wrong side. The next 4 years should be a wild ride.

Oh Yeah, about the entry title. My friend Joe has a blog where he titles all of his entries with song lyrics. I am playing off his theme (read: blatantly ripping him off) and am going to title my entries with a quote I heard during my day. Today's was a wrong number I got at my house. I answered the phone and the woman on the other end, in a thick Indian accent, asked me "ees dees da Bear-gor Keen?"
"Why yes," I said, "I am the Burger King."
She hung up. Perhaps she was angry that I, as the Burger King, insist on using cow in my sandwiches.