One of my biggest problems is that I don’t always learn from my mistakes. Generally this doesn’t affect anyone else, but I inconvenienced the rest of my family on Labor Day when we decided to go out for lunch.

Holiday weekend really provide ample opportunity to do whatever you please. We had already put together a nice weekend of fun, but had done a bunch of it separately.

I thought a nice lunch together would give the three of us a chance to wind down the weekend together. We didn’t see each other much on Sunday so we could spend the time catching up on what happened the day before.

We did have a few rules, however. We didn’t want to go anywhere we had been to recently, we didn’t want to get fast food, and we wanted to go a local joint. I like to try and support small businesses whenever I can.

So we piled into the car and set out for our target. I should have known that disaster awaited us.

A year and a half ago, I promised Bridget I would take her out for breakfast – just the two of us. I had come off a pretty busy stretch at work and had a three-day weekend coming up because of Memorial Day. So we decided to go out for pancakes and eggs on Memorial Day morning.

The parking lot at our regular breakfast place was empty. Oh, no, I thought as we approached. Could they be closed for the holiday? They were so I had to call an audible. We tried our second choice. Closed. Same for our third choice. Finally, we found a chain which was open, but we had to wait longer and spend more money than we usually did for breakfast.

The place we headed to first on Labor Day was, ironically, the same place Bridget and I headed for on that Memorial Day. We breathed a sigh of relief around 12:30 p.m. when we saw a few cars in the parking lot. That proved to be premature when we reached the front door. They only opened for breakfast and had closed at noon.

Where was that kind of schedule that Memorial Day? That’s when I needed them open before noon, not now.

The rest of the story plays out like you would expect, No place we looked at was open. We could have gone and found some place to eat that didn’t meet our original criteria, but pretty much resigned ourselves from the beginning to just eating at home. We drove by a few places to be certain, then cut our losses.

I feel bad even complaining about stuff like that because I don’t want to sound like the kind of guy who thinks that everyone should work when I have a day off. I understand why the small restaurants give their staff a day off on national holidays. I just wish they would set up a rotation where they would take turns opening up for people like me.

My only real complaint is that my wife looked at me funny when I asked her if she wanted to go out for dinner. Our luck had to change eventually.