I have always had excellent luck taking on temp work through agencies. About 90% of the people I worked for eventually tried to hire me, but when I hadn't liked the job it was quite easy to use the defined end date as an excuse to get out of there. Temping definitely helps ends meet, though it's not great for getting jobs that best use one's particular skills. And the other thing it does is pad the resume -- getting something current on there with skills similar to another thing you might want to pursue can be very helpful.