How I Spent The Thirty-First Week Of The Rest Of My Life

That was quite a busy week.  Usually when I sleep away a Saturday afternoon, I feel guilty.  But not this week.  I sent out 15 resumes between Monday and Friday (even with USAjobs.gov pretty much taking the week off due to technical issues).  But, in reality, I might have only have sent out two that were any good.  Ever.  See, my dad volunteered to look over my resume.  And he discovered a huge error.

For the last seven months, I have been sending out a resume with an incorrect phone number on it.

It hasn't been intentionally of course.  It was just a mistype.  But, looking at it dozens of times, I never noticed this particular error.  There was something funny on The Colbert Report about trusting all of our data to the cloud instead of our minds.  And, apparently, I have done this with my own phone number on my resume right from jump street.

This either really got in the way if potential employers have been trying to contact me.  Or it hasn't gotten in the way at all.  If an employer saw that the number (hopefully correct) that I have been entering on my application is different than my resume, that's a major error that could wind my resume in the garbage.  And, since I even put in an e-mail that one organization had a typo in the address for their human resources department, the fact sometimes makes me look like a hypocrite.

It's a good thing that I still have 38 bookmarks on idealist.org that I need to send in my new resumes to.  Hopefully, without any huge typos in my cover letters.  I've been spending all day drafting new ones in various Starbucks until my eyes have went blurry.  The only reason I didn't send in more was that a lot of the jobs I've wanted to apply to required writing samples.  And I never recovered those from my old job.  That's another task for next week.

I can only imagine the typos in those.

Here's how I "spent" last week:

TUESDAY, AUGUST 2 ($45.65)

• 11:23 a.m. Capital One Bank (Market Square) - Free.  After collection all of the change that I had built up over the past three months (even) that I had lived in D.C., I was able to cash in almost $30.00.  I put it in savings.
• 12:03 p.m. Starbucks - $4.00.  In order to make it to a place with working wi-fi to see the Senate pass the debt ceiling bill, I decided to do my job searching before lunch.  Of course, I ended up looking for no jobs and just watching Mitch McConnell and Harry Reid's summations.
• 1:34 p.m. FedEx Office - $2.34.  I printed out my freshly newly redesigned resumes.  With an incorrect phone number.  Ugh!
• 2:12 p.m. Naan & Beyond - $8.83.  While I don't hold it against their standalone locations, I did not like this one in a food court off of Pennsylvania Avenue.  Fast food Indian can really be done wrong.
• 3:03 p.m. Safeway - $28.48.  Sadly, almost a third of the bill was two boxes of Cheez-Its.  The rest of my shopping for the week was a little over $20.00.
• 5:01 p.m. Simply Sweet on Main - $2.00.  I returned to the little coffee shop in downtown Manassas and got an Italian soda.  One time, when I feel better, I'm going to need to get ice cream.

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 3 (Free)

THURSDAY, AUGUST 4 ($19.77)

• 11:24 a.m. Roti Mediterranean Grill - $8.52.  This Roti is the closest one to a Chicago location that I have found in Washington D.C.  I rarely have reason to be in Foggy Bottom or I would be a regular.
• 11:54 a.m. Washington Circle Park - Free.  I had just wrote a Yelp review involving George Washington so I decided to check out the only statue of him in D.C.  It's kind of pathetically small.
• 12:53 a.m. Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History - Free.  Even though I really wanted to see what I hadn't in this museum, I just didn't feel well still.  Though I did enjoy the exhibit of Rastafarianism.
• 2:21 p.m. Starbucks - $4.00.  Despite my health shortcomings, I felt the need to submit some resumes at the Starbucks.  My eyes held out better than at the Smithsonian.
• 5:33 p.m. Union Station - $5.25.  Eating dinner at Taco Bell when I didn't feel well was probably a bad idea. But I'm addicted.
• 6:41 p.m. Simply Sweet on Main - $2.00.  Another Italian soda.  I had read Politico on the way home and I figured it was the only thing that could contain the rage I felt.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 5 ($28.45)

• 10:36 a.m. Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden - Free.  I know I'm in the minority here, but I found this place to be complete b.s.  It's the kind of modern art that turns the middle of America off to the East Coast.
• 11:39 a.m. The National Mall - Free.  It was too nice to be in a museum (especially a bad one).  So to wait out the lunch rush in Alexandria, I chilled on The Mall.
• 12:23 p.m. FedEx Office - $6.45.  Printing out my newly revised (again) resume took a lot of effort.  A large family had taken up most of the seats.  And the computers had pretty much stopped working.  But I did it.
• 2:02 p.m. Bilbo Baggins - $22.00.  Thankfully, with the help of Bilbo Baggins' wi-fi, I caught the beginning of Lollapalooza.  I also caught a buzz and didn't send in a single resume.  Oops.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 6 ($10.03)

• 6:59 p.m. Starbucks - $4.00.  Since I felt guilty about my lack of effort the day before, I went to the Starbucks nearby and bookmarked jobs on idealist.org.  I didn't send in any resumes though.
• 8:43 p.m. Subway - $6.03.  Listening to Deftones made me crave carbs.  Though, honestly, so did being so close to a location.

SUNDAY, AUGUST 7 (Free)

MONDAY, AUGUST 8 ($143.82)

• 11:20 a.m. National Building Museum - $47.70.  Getting my father a birthday present was difficult thing this year.  But I knew he had a lot of books and could use some bookends.  They had ones shaped like the New York skyline.
• 12:35 p.m. National Capital Post Office - $17.12.  I can never figure out what shipping supplies they give you for free and which ones they charge you for.  But now I have a virtually unstoppable supply of packing tape.
• 1:15 p.m. Chipotle Mexican Grill - $7.00.  Since I was about to join a gym in Chinatown, I decided just to eat nearby.  This is one of the busiest Chipotles I have ever seen!
• 1:42 p.m. Washington Sports Club - $68.00.  I couldn't pass up the deal that they had going on right now.  They waived almost all of the joining fees and gave August free.  Ordinarily, I count don't count my dues, but I will this time.
• 2:03 p.m. Starbucks - $4.00.  Even though I didn't work out on this first visit, my adrenaline was jumping.  So I went to Starbucks and sent out more application.

So that's $247.72.  Quite an expensive week.  Despite the amount of resumes that I sent out, I don't think I can justify that.  Well, at least now I have a better product of a resume (my dad also made some improvements) to send around to hope to recoup it.  My total money spent since I've been unemployed is $6390.35.