When in doubt, ASK!

I'm usually pretty good about asking for clarification/confirmation when I'm not 100% sure about things, but in the few cases where I just make an assumption, it usually comes back to bite me in the behind. ^^;;

The school visitation schedule we get from our supervisor usually has non-working days (i.e. weekends and national holidays) 'x'-d out and highlighted in a different colour. So, when I saw that March 27th-31st (Friday to Tuesday) was 'x'-d out and highlighted, I thought, "Sweet! The office gave us some bonus holidays!" and made vacation plans accordingly.

I'm going to meet Steph in California (Los Angeles/Anaheim) that weekend for the Sunday Colorado @ Anaheim game!! Considering how difficult it was to find a long weekend when both of us were available AND there was a game we'd be interested in seeing, I was pretty thrilled at how perfectly it all worked out.

But talking to my supervisor recently, I learned that apparently we don't have those days off and are, in fact, expected to go into the office--meaning that if I want those days off, I need to use my vacation days (nenkyu).

ARGH!! I felt like a total idiot when I found out.

Normally it wouldn't be a big deal, except that thanks to trips home this past August and December, not to mention the school trip to Tokyo in November, I've only got five more days of nenkyu left! If I have to use it for the 27th, 30th and 31st, I'll only have two days left. But I also need to go back this summer for WAY camp. And since we don't get our next year's nenkyu until around August 4th or 5th, I'm probably going to run short!

Double ARGH!!

I never thought I'd be able to use up 20 vacation days up so quickly. That makes me really regret even the one day (two half days, actually) I spent doing moving stuff in the spring (particularly since the other ALT who moved a couple of months later didn't have to use nenkyu but was given time off to go apartment hunting).

Andy's told me that our office is pretty nice about nenkyu and isn't likely to mind if we use a little more than we actually have, but I just HATE asking for stuff like that. And even though it's not fair of me--since it's an unrelated issue--running short of nenkyu makes me feel irritated that I can't get daikyu for all the weekends I spend doing Kirita stuff.

Well, it's done, anyway. Our flights and hotel are already booked, so I'll just have to suck it up. I guess in some ways it's better that I made that wrong assumption, since if I'd known I would've planned to leave on the Saturday instead of the Friday to cut down on my nenkyu usage. But that would've made the flight more expensive and overall less worthwhile since I'd be paying all that money for only two-days away, rather than a three-day trip.

At any rate, this is the trip that Steph and I promised to make together five years ago, so even if it messes up my nenkyu planning, it'll definitely be worth it!