afternoon tea, a baseball game, shopping for furniture, a pitcher of mimosas, my friend's love life, taking a very tired sister just back from Spain home to her car, turkey and mashed potatoes, finding the elusive IKEA cabinet hinges, and a really awful Spiderman movie.

that was the weekend.

it all came about because Corinne had the entire weekend off. what was it, twenty-four days straight of work? something ridiculous like that. she handled it well, though. very little bitching (though, any amount of bitching would have been completely acceptable), no bouts of depression and self-doubt. go her. but, still, shame on her residency for scheduling that many shifts in a row. pfft!

in any case, the gods of emergency medicine smiled on us and we had a bright, sunny weekend to spend together.

we started off Saturday by joining CostCo. mostly, we were looking for large quantities of bird seed since the crazy little finches who eat at our new bird feeder go through about a pound and a half of seed a day and threaten to make us poor in supplying them with food. CostCo didn't have any but Corinne was like a kid in a candy store anyway, pointing out all the great deals, and figuring out how many meals we could make out of some 20 gallon drum of something or other. in the end, we only bought socks, a really awesome drill bit set, a huge box of cereal, and an assortment of couscous. but i could see the potential and we'd be back soon.

after that, we boogied over to the Palace Hotel for afternoon tea. this was a little surprise i'd put together for my girl. the Palace Hotel, for those of you who don't know, has a huge glass-roofed atrium that is absolutely beautiful and is one of the oldest hotels in San Francisco. (if you saw The Game it's the roof that Michael Douglas falls through in the end of the movie.) we sat at a table with a white table cloth and several dishes of treats -- scones, a variety of sweets, and those little cucumber sandwiches that i love so much. we sipped really good tea and ate our little bites and enjoyed the whole thing immensely.

that night, after a rest, we headed to the Giants game. good game, though a little chilly, and punctuated by finding a spot in the park that sells draught Guinness. no more drinking crap beer! yay! we ate dinner near the ballpark at Paragon, which was a bit crowded and bar-like but had surprisingly tasty food. i had a huge lamb chop that was incredibly juicy and tasty, sided fresh corn and peppers spiced with jalapenos. yum.

Sunday started out perfectly. we picked up Stellah at her house and headed down to Julie's Supper Club for an occasional brunch party called Rehab that involved costumes, DJs, and Chasers, the anti-hangover "drug", on every table. we ordered a pitcher of very good mimosas and breakfast, and enjoyed the scene. definitely an activity to repeat.

while there, Stellah's love interest showed up unexpectedly. we'd just finished hearing the entire tale of how beautiful and wonderful he was, but how the timing didn't seem to be right for him, and then he shows up. very gracious, friendly guy -- i got an excellent vibe off of him. perhaps it'll work out for the two of them. Stellah certainly seemed smitten.

we left Julie's around 2:00p and went off furniture shopping. we're looking for something to put the TV in that's attractive and not huge. (we have some fairly significant space constraints where we want to put the thing.) unfortunately, San Francisco furniture stores suck! seriously, there is a plethora of god-awful, ridiculously expensive furniture in this city and very little that's good. and this wasn't something that IKEA could solve.

we hit at least five appalling stores and a couple decent stores without any luck. then i saw it. driving up 9th Street, i caught a glimpse of something that seemed right. i quickly pulled over and we went to check it out. brilliant! it's pretty much exactly what we need. right size, right look, not too tall, not too cheap looking, not too expensive, and the doors fold away. the only problem is it probably won't fit my stereo equipment. but i talked to the guy at the store and he said we could customize it -- for a price, of course. i'm going to go back to him with some exact dimensions but at least we found something that mostly works.

oh, by the way, here's what it looks like.

so with that find, i dropped Corinne back at home and went to pick up Amber at the airport. she'd just arrived back from a few days in Spain and needed to get to her car which was parked at my office. she looked tan and happy but really tired. it sounded like she'd had an awesome time. and she was very surprised to find her car washed inside and out -- a little present i'd done for her.

on the way home, i thought i'd stop by IKEA to see if they had the hinges for our kitchen cabinets. the ordeal of the cabinets has been long and annoying. i bought a new tall cabinet back in ... April? it must have been at least that long. anyways, it had two big doors and two small doors. the small doors were out of stock and had to be delivered to my house. it took them a while to figure this out but once they did, everything seemed fine. unfortunately, they never came because IKEA had taken down the address off of my driver's license, which is old, and shipped the doors there. it took several phone calls over a couple weeks to get that information relayed to the right person and have a new order sent. (there was a brief moment during one of the calls where i nearly lost it -- the woman said, "oh, we don't expect to have those in until 2005." thankfully, she was mistaken.)

the doors arrived, finally, but without hinges. i went in to order them but they were out of stock. frustrated, i tried to buy some similar hinges at the hardware store. but they were out of them, too. another couple weeks later, i finally found the hinges at Home Depot. unfortunately, these hinges were missing a small plastic insert that would make them work with the cabinet. i ended up improvising something from a wall screw anchor that worked beautifully and got the hinges attached.

but they were the wrong hinges.

the doors didn't close properly with them on. and so i was completely out of luck with that solution.

anyways, on the way back from dropping off my sister, i stopped by IKEA to ask when the hinges would be available and found that they were already in stock! hallelujah. i raced home with my purchases -- which also included a new mirror for Corinne and a five-pound back of Swedish meatballs -- and installed them. beautiful. now all i need to do is find the handles that match the previously-installed handles and we'll be done. phew!

when i got home, Corinne had turkey (left over from my parents' visit), mashed potatoes, mushrooms and gravy waiting. how's that for home cookin'? i'm also eating it for lunch.

after dinner, we went to see Spiderman 2 which was awful. i spent a good portion of the two-hour-and-fifteen-minutes long movie staring at the ceiling. the action scenes were awesome -- they did an amazing job on Dr. Octopus' arms -- but the action scenes were also few and far between. i highly recommend avoiding this movie at all costs, or at least waiting until it comes out on DVD so you can skip through the overly-exasperated, and overly-long, love and introspection scenes.

and a big "thhhhpppt!" to all of you who recommended this movie, including the San Francisco Chronicle.

not that it could ruin such a lovely weekend, but still.