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I'm tired right now. I worked the closing shift at one bar on Thursday night and didn't get home until 3:20 so didn't get to sleep until 4 in the morning. Then I opened at the other bar yesterday, which meant I had to be there at 1:00 in the afternoon. I got seven hours of sleep Thursday night (or, uh, Friday morning, technically) so that's not bad at all. But then last night I was out drinking until 3:30 in the morning, and then I had to get up at 8:00 to be at work at 10 this morning, and I didn't get off until almost 7:00. Which means lots of hours of working and not a lot of hours of sleeping, basically. Well, and some hours drinking. I guess I wouldn't be this tired if I hadn't done that last night, but whatever. Sometimes a girl needs three Bay Breezes, and an amaretto on the rocks and then maybe a Malibu and Coke or two and then maybe she gets kind of weirded out by the bikers and dreadlocked guys at a particular local bar so she needs a couple of shots so that she's brave enough to gawk openly at everyone and then she needs to come home and drink a mandarin vodka and tonic and then if she's lucky she'll somehow wake up at 8 a.m. sans hangover (I'm lucky!).
Next week will be even crazier because I work four days in a row instead of just three.
I don't mind much, honestly. I really do like the job a lot. I mean, seriously, I like bartending about a hundred times more than I expected to like it. Take today, for example: I made $150 in tips this afternoon, and what did I do? I poured some draught beers and opened some bottles, I made a few margaritas, I chatted with all of the regulars. It's amazing how many people come into the bar every single day, or at least every time I'm working, which means they must be in there every day. I stocked the bar, but that was easy today. I ate a hot dog. I gossiped with the cocktail waitress. I watched music videos. My manager let me take a tequila shot with another one of the bartenders who was off today and hanging out drinking and watching the golf tournament. And I made a hundred and fifty dollars! For talking to people and pouring beers, basically! I never even felt that busy. Business was steady all day, but I never felt really rushed or flustered. When I think about how much I would have had to bust my ass to make $150 in a shift at the last restaurant job I worked, I want to cry for waiters. Plus when you're waiting tables, it always feels like work. At the bar, I can sometimes trick myself into thinking I'm just hanging out and having fun with everyone else. I just can't leave and go to another bar if the scene is dead, that's all.
It's not always this great, true. But the fact that it's even possible at all to make that sort of money for the "work" I did this afternoon is still sort of mind-boggling to me.

Speaking of money--and yes, I am aware that money is a more taboo topic than sex but I'm going to talk about it anyway so get outta here if the subject makes you uncomfortable--I got my contract for my new TA position in University Land yesterday. I'm going to be a section leader for one of the intro classes to my field. I haven't figured out yet if section leader means me teaching my own entire section of the class (oh god...) or if it means me sitting in on someone else's lectures and teaching a complementary study session or lab a couple of times a week. Obviously I'm hoping for the latter, just because I don't know if I'm ready to make the lesson plans for an entire college intro class by myself yet. But I guess I'll find out for sure what the job entails soon enough. I start August 17th.
Anyway, I am happy to know what my job is, but I wasn't pleased to discover that the contract is for about $1200 less than what I thought they were going to be paying me. Apparently the state funding didn't come through, so they can't increase assistantship salaries this year as they wanted to. It's not a huge deal, I'm still getting my promised summer funding, and I'm still going to be making a lot more money in University Land than I would have at the other school that offered me a position. But when your stipend is less than $20,000 a year, $1200 is a pretty big percentage of that.
So that was some bad news. But then a couple of good things happened financially. I got my move-out charges from the apartment I moved out of a couple of weeks ago, and they're only charing me $60! I suppose some people would be pissed to be charged any money at all, but I'm thrilled. When I moved out of my first apartment in 2005, my roommate and I were charged almost $1,000 to replace our carpeting. The apartment complex screwed us over in a major way that I won't waste time explaining, and we were livid, but there was nothing we could do about it. I was dreading having to pay in the neighborhood of $500 again. So when I saw that the bill was only a very reasonable $60 for carpet repairs, and when I realized that the only reason I was being charged at all was because they finally caught on that I never paid a pet deposit (accidental oversight that I then took advantage of, another long story...), I happily wrote them the $60 check. Considering the original pet deposit should have been $250, I'd say I got a hell of a deal.
In other good financial news, if my average pay for the first two weeks ends up being my average for the next seven, I'll end up making more money this summer than I expected to make. I don't want to jinx myself and I'm trying not to get too greedy and then end up disappointed, but I think it's possible that if I keep working four to five shifts a week for the rest of the summer, the money I'll manage to save while I'm living here will more than make up for the fact that my salary in University Land will be less than expected.
I'll have to wait and see what happens, but I'm pretty happy right now.

I'm also happy about lying out by a pool all day tomorrow. Here's hoping the weather is nice!

P.S.-Thanks for reading, guys! I don't say that enough, but I appreciate everyone who actually takes time to check this page and read my ramblings once in a while. Sorry it's a little boring lately, but it will get better!