Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

I was expecting to hear from the temp agency this morning, about the new work. Not having heard by the time I got back from lunch (2-ish), I called them, got put through to the right person (this took a little while, in part because they change people around enough that I've stopped keeping track, but this month's is named Brian), and said "I'm at Triumph, I've got this new assignment, what's the money going to look like?" He told me, and I told him I was disappointed. He asked what I had been expecting, and I told him, and added that the hourly rate he had named was in the range of what, a year ago when the agency were interviewing me, they'd mentioned as the upper end of the range for first-shift proofreading (night work pays more). He had me hold on a minute (I don't know if he actually called someone in accounting, or just is under instructions to say he's doing so when someone calls about this sort of thing), and raised it by a dollar.

On the one hand, I'm still being underpaid. On the other, this constitutes a 21% raise over what I'd been getting until last week, and I got it in part by being forthright and asking for what I wanted. And that dollar an hour difference is probably about $1800/year, given realistic numbers for the amount of time I take off, either by choice or because temps don't get paid for things like July 4.

After the phone call, I sat at my desk with my manuscript and calmed down from the necessary adrenaline. (It was a very clean manuscript; I didn't need anything like the three days Wendy had told me I should feel free to take on it.)