Just like in the Olden Days...

Last weekend, as is wont to happen every three or four months, Buzz was his hotel's MOD - manager on duty. What this means is that from Friday night at 5pm until Monday morning at 8am he is the guy the hotel will call in the event of some sort of emergency - like if someone dies in the hotel or if there was a work stoppage or if say, it rained so hard sand-bagging the garage didn't work and the underground parking gets flooded, or if there's a fire in the kitchen, or a robbery. That kind of fun stuff.

The hotel has this archaic rule that says if the MOD lives more than 15 minutes from the city they must move into the hotel and live there during their MOD shift. Of course, living out in the OBB some 20 minutes from Charlottetown and with Buzz being mindful of the regulations, every time he's MOD he packs his bag and plans for a weekend at the office. When we first moved here, that sounded like lots of fun to me. Let's pack up the dogs and head to town! We can lie about in bed all day ordering room service! We can rent movies on the pay-per-view! We could take in a show! We could go see some live entertainment...just like city-people do every weekend!

Except that instead of the Charlottetown version of a weekend in Manhattan, those MOD weekends always looked something like this. Me: bored and after dinner, breakfast, lunch and dinner from room service I'd be dying to eat anything that wasn't served under a stainless steel dome. Him: he'd be chained to his office desk cranking out financial statements all day long. Dogs: when they aren't barking at passers-by our guest room they're always wanting to go out at 6:30 a.m. and of COURSE you can't just open the back door and let them take off for a whiz so someone (usually Buzz) has to get up at the crack of way too early, get dressed, leash up the beasts and head down the hallway, into the elevator, out the front door, where one of them (usually Snickers) would drop a load right in front of the departing guests.

So, yes. Weekend at the hotel? Not as much fun as you might think.

After getting storm-stayed at the hotel over New Year's Eve last January I declared that forever more when Buzz was MOD he would be on his own. Too much stress and inconvenience on the dogs, don'tcha know. Plus, remember the room service? There's nothing healthful on that menu and even though they have this motto "our kitchen is your kitchen" as soon as you deviate from the room service menu, you're served congealed Eggs Benedict or a salad with so much dressing on it you'd swear the lettuce jumped into the vat and swam around for a while.

So yeah, last weekend with Buzz being MOD we both got to return to our bachelor/bachelorette days. He stayed at the hotel working countless hours on end, just like he did B.K. (Before Kim) and I? Well, I hung out at home, lounging about, reading Vanity Fair, drinking tea, watching reality television (or in the case of last weekend the Patrick Swayze -RIP - movie marathon) eating soup and generally, enjoying a quiet weekend on my own. Gidget stood vigil on our chair by the window (all the better to observe the driveway from) waiting for her man to come home. Snickers never left my side.

Now, don't go reading anything into this! Time away from each other is good for a relationship! Plus, I like being alone. It gives me time to think. And sleep without the snoring on the pillow beside me. It also means I sleep on the couch because being upstairs with no-one else but Frieda (our ghost, who you can read all about here) and the dogs can sometimes be a tad bit scary. I'm just saying.

I'm sure Buzz enjoyed time away from me and the animals equally as much. No 6 a.m. argument about who's going to get out of bed to let out the animals. No-one digging their elbow into his ribs with every (loud) breath he took. I'm sure it was pure bliss, in fact.

Oh, we still saw each other. Friday night we met up with a friend of ours from Jasper for dinner at one of the local seafood joints and had a blast. Saturday we actually had a date...dinner for two at a nice restaurant. Both of those are things we used to do all the time and both are things we hardly ever do anymore.

So yeah, time alone. Date nights. Dinner with friends. Just like in the olden days...