A Weekend's Worth

This weekend was the Sneak Preview for the Avengers expansion of UDE's VS TCG system. I haven't judged many of these because, in the past, I was quite busy with volunteer work for Decipher and just didn't have the time. Now I do, and I enjoy the game, so I offered to judge for our local TO. Now, I should mention that I do enjoy judging. I like organizing events, being part of a team, and making players happy. Still, when all is said and done, judging is a lot of work and for these events it pretty much means you give up a weekend, or at least half of one. I've been judging Magic for 5 years now and my TO for that is great and I've been compensated very well by him, but now that I started judging locally for Versus, well, I was asked what kind of compensation I would like. Since I had never thought about what I'm "worth," I basically said I'll take whatever. After the weekend I sat down and did some calculations and realized that my Magic judging gets me more per hour than my Ph.D. work (which is my main source of income). I also realized that what I got for working this weekend's Versus event was a few dollars less per hour than when I judge Magic. The fact is that 1) I have quite a lot of judging experience 2) my tournaments run smoothly 3) I'm trustworthy and 4) my weekends are precious and I need to feel like my time spent indoors on sunny July weekends is well worth it. So, I need to figure out what hourly rate I'd be comfortable with, and I will, but I'd be curious to see what other people think I'm worth in dollars per hour...and I mean as a judge people...get your minds out of the gutter!