Here’s the deal when you work at the News-Herald: If you are the reporter working on Saturday, you usually get Monday off to make up for it.

Thus was the case with me this week.

And for added excitement, my friend Sarah — who is a senior at ODU — and her cousin Erin, a junior at JMU, were coming to Suffolk to hang out for the day.

Out of all of my friends from high school and college, I’m one of about three who live in Suffolk. That said, I usually feel a sense of burden to show off how down-home, relaxed and sweet Peanut City is.

We had the afternoon to ourselves, so we decided that, to start off, the three of us would head to lunch.

Not wanting to take them anywhere they could go in Norfolk, I suggested the C&C Diner downtown.

I’d never been. Sarah likes diners. It seemed like a fun adventure.

Until we pulled up and saw that the diner was closed.

Now, in hindsight, Erin made a great point: We never saw a closed sign. We just saw a completely empty diner, no lights turned on and the empty parking spaces in front of the place.

We may have jumped to conclusions.

But never fear, I remembered another time when Sarah was in Suffolk. It was a Friday night, around 11 p.m., and we decided to go out for a little nightcap. I suggested we try the Chuckatuck Village Tavern, because I had never been. Unfortunately, by the time we made it out there, the tavern was just closing.

So, on Monday I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to try the tavern.

As we made our way through Chuckatuck, I was trying to be an awesome tour guide for Erin and tell her different interesting tidbits about the places we were passing.

Unfortunately, I’m not what one would call “tour guide material.”

She would ask a question and I would simply respond with, “I remember we did a story on that one time, but I don’t remember.”

Needless to say, we all were a little relieved to pull into the tavern only, though we were sorry to find that it, too, was closed. This time we did see the “Closed” sign in the window.

We ended up cutting our losses and went to Sal’s Pizza back in downtown. It was a good plan – we all had a good time.

And as Erin and Sarah were leaving, they did say how much they liked Suffolk and how they want to come back — but maybe next time it will be on a Tuesday.