Graduate student freetime.

As as graduate student I don't have the most freetime. I have to teach and grade for a course(for free), do my 20-60 hours a week or research, and have 3 classes. Each of these individually is almost a full load for any person. I am not special, most graduate students have loads similar to mine. I have noticed that as the teaching and class load increased, my research has suffered. This is due in part to my research at this point mostly being to play catchup to a field I just entered, but also because I just don't have enough time to dedicate to thinking creatively about problems in my field. I find I can only make my brain be useful for so many hours out of the day. How many USEFUL hours do other graduate students manage to squeeze out of their day? If I can get 4-5 hours of very creative thought I'm usually pretty happy(plus another 10 or so of labor, note taking, and keeping track of small details about my work).
This begs the question though, in the small amount of freetime that we do get as graduate students, what do people do with it? I brew beer, some educational reading, and a lot of time just vegetating my brain on tv or movies. Its like television, or a book is the least effort my brain can manage to process sometimes. What does everyone else do?
On an aside, a question I have been wondering, in everyone's experience do you think that people in graduate school drink more or less than equivalent age people working(assuming same field, socioeconomic position etc). Ie your friends that finished college and worked at that engineering firm, or research lab...do they drink more than you in graduate school, or less?

Frustration

University administration isn't particularly known for the speed at which it conducts its business. This is getting ridiculous however. I moved up here to my PhD institution June 5th on the assumption I would start work right away and get an early start so I could be productive by the time the school year started. It's August 6th and I still haven't been hired on. I've been going to the library for the latter half of summer each day to try and get in the habit of being at work every day, but it's disappointing not being able to get a jump start on research. I can do some background reading, but until I know my exact topic it's a bit hard. Now I'm waiting on a background check to come through. I haven't been paid all this summer so money is starting to get a bit tight as well which means I couldn't even take the summer to go on vacation and have fun.

How have you my non-existant readers dealt with long time periods with no pay and dashed expectations? Well at the very least there is a rather cute girl down the line of study desks I'm at.... That hardly makes up for 2-3 months of no pay however. This also means when school starts back up I have to work that much harder to publish often.

I'm trying to decide, for the science type posts I eventually plan to have on here whether I should do things in my area, or branch out and try and explain/commentate on something new? Anyone have any advice on whether staying within your specialty increases burnout?