Something just happened to Chess.com...every link just gets displayed in a vertical list on a blank white background. Also I can't see the board in any of my games. Could someone help please? Thanks!

When the site is slow to load the style sheets often don't take effect right away.  Is your connection slow?  Does it clear itself up if you wait a bit?

I've seen this before as well on a slow connection, but it usually corrects itself with just a little patience.

My connection is fairly fast, usually only takes <10 seconds to load pages.

However, I left my browser open while I ate dinner, came back, and it still hasn't changed.

Okay, I've got 8 hours left before I time out my first game, so I'm going to have to act fast.

Would this be considered a legitimate reason to turn on vacation, at least until my browser starts cooperating? The only other thing I can think of is to try opening another browser, but if that fails, I have no idea of what to do.

Absolutely -- turn on your vacation, if you're able, and submit a support request (if you're able):

http://support.chess.com/index.php?_m=tickets&_a=submit

Thank you! I just needed to make sure it's a legitimate reason for vacation and won't get me banned.

did you feed your browser anything?

Lol, no.