I'm off Thursday, not because it's a regularly scheduled day off, but because I promised I would work for [a pharmacy chain] on Friday, and it didn't seem practical to go from one job that ended at 8am to one that began at 8:30am!

I have started my night rotation job, 8pm to 8am, and haven't adjusted yet. I'm about to go get dressed and head back.

Working nine to five with commuting used about the same number of hours, but there was a psychological break at midnight. When I left work, I could say, "I'll see you tomorrow." In this job, the proper response is, "I'll see you later!" or "be back in a few hours!" It feels different.

I spent part of last night wondering how I would describe the night. It was my first night on the job, and I learned all about the gaps in my training to work at this pharmacy. Evidently, they're desperate for people to fill these pharmacist slots, and couldn't wait for me to be ready, so there was lots of things I didn't know – all of them vital, such as a code to use the cash register. This morning at 6am, just as the first of the morning patients began to trickle in, the computers froze. They're supposed to do some kind of review and back-up in the middle of the night, and of course I hadn't been told about it. By the time I figured it out by trial and error, the system was down and I had three people waiting.

More next time. People ask questions at this store too.