Many of you will be aware of the MiDFur convention being held in Melbourne in the first week of December. I am the Exhibitions Coordinator, which means that I am in charge of the Dealers Den, Art Show, and Charity Auction. I have two people working under me who will take care of the latter two, while I focus on the Dealers Den, but it's kept me busy for months in preparation. Anyway, I will be taking that week off from work to do the job, but I reckoned I had enough vacation time accrued to allow for that and the Christmas holidays.

That is until we got a notice from the boss today announcing that due to the repressed commercial climate, the factory is going to close down from the Friday before Christmas, and not re-open until January 21. Four weeks! Deducting weekends and public holidays, that's 17 days off work. Add to that the 5 days I'm already taking off for MiDFur, and that's a total of 22 days of leave. Needless to say, I do not have even half of that accrued. I can't drop MiDFur at this late stage - I already have too much invested in it. So that leaves me staring at a huge gap in my income which I have no idea how I'm going to fill at this point.