The Brit Bus Tour has stopped in San Francisco. All Aboard Mate!

Pretty fun time and a great group of folks putting things together. CLICK HERE! to see more about it! Anyway, Julia Jones, The Crave and the Jyrojets are on this tour and I got to see them do an acoustic bit on Thursday at the King George Hotel and a "Pub Crawl" Tour today with three stops and a sudden FREE PASS to see the Kaiser Chiefs perform at thw Warfield . AMAZING stuff. Sometimes its good to be me. "My Favorite Thing About Jane" by the Jyrojets sounds clean, ready, and catchy. My bet for the hit song of the tour! Look for these guys on a radio near you soon.

Touring around San Fran in a double decker will get you some looks, but I think the best thing was easily the people and the music. The PR team, event guys and the bands were all solid people and great folks to go on a Pub Crawl with. Cheers fellas! And "The Crave" owe me a pint when I get back to the UK.

Beer Glorious Beer. For those of you in my circle that do not appreciate fine micro-brewing or beer in general, go put on your worry-wart hats and sit in the corner for a while. This post is not for you. For those that do, wellll....

Yesterday I attended a 'Tion' for the Russian River Brewery at The Toronado in the Lower Haight here in San Francisco. Two things:

First: The Toronado should be on any beer lover Haj. (Yes I'm trying to be ironic, not bigoted.) In the midst of so many fine breweries in the NW US, this bar continues to stand out as the home of great, craft brewed and non- traditional beer. It looks like a biker bar/dive from the outside but when you enter and get an order in past the surley, tatto laden barkeep, you will have a world of fermented fabulousness at your fingertips. It serves NO FOOD! It is a beer bar. But it is perfect happy to allow you to toddle in with baskets or paper plates from the almost equally as locally legenday Mythic Pizza or Sausage Parlor that flank it. What more could you ask for? www.toronado.com

Second: The Russian River brewery produces some brew that PACKED the house all night for this event. They weren't giving it away, they were selling it on a Wednesday and the result was an elbow-to-elbow-buy-4-at-a-time event. The Pleny the Elder (an IPA) and Lap Dance win the 'keepin' it realz' beer name award. Most of the catalog is very religious. Links below:

• Little White Lie
• Redemption
• Perdition
• Benediction
• Damnation
• Deification
• Erudition
• Rejection
• Salvation
• Sanctification
• all at www.russianriverbrewing.com

Go ye forth and find one to enjoy. You will thank me for it.

Cheers Big Ears!!

14 innings end in disappointment! Outside of the fact that I was hanging out with a ton of great people from work, Philly Piggy, Mo-Piggy and leading the band when it came to cheering the Cardinals Wednesday at AT&T/Pac-Bell/Cingular/Nextsponsorplease Park I felt a bit of a pang of regret when the game ended. After 14 innings of hard fought baseball, the Cards inability to keep up a steady batting average and some blunders with coaching and communication ultimately cost the Red Birds the win against the very sucky San Francisco Giants. Maybe its just karmic revenge for getting a mass of people together to go to a game where I was rooting against the home team. Bah, who knows. At least we saw Pujols pop a dinger and Bonds put number 738 into McCovy Cove.

Good luck to Frank Frisina of www.lifesabluff.com as he heads off to Vegas hoping to build his business, play in a ASPCA celebrity pro-am charity tournament and hopefully fleece some WPT tourists at the poker tables all in one trip. Killer Flops and Suckas' Drawing Dead, Franky Bones. Don't pop a lung...again. Seriously.

This last weekend was the little otter's 4th birthday party and we got her a big ol' back yard swing set. Her backyard 'park' as she put it, was an instant hit and will probably be the source of a lot of "time for dinner" fits from her mother. Everyone had a great time and I'll be sending out some photo CDs to family soon. If you don't get one, email me.

Also, the move is complete and we have a new home number! Yep, no more cell-phone only for Waldo, I have been shoved into the world of land lines yet again. Mass email to friends and family coming soon.

PS -- I hate parking enforcement and community bureaucracy.

We be moved in!! The new Palcio de Otter y Piggy has all our stuff in it. Still some unpacking and sorting to do and TV etc. to hook up, but we are now officially there! If you don't have the new address call or email me.

Its a tight street but we've managed to work out a couple parking spots. The neighbors are plentiful but fairly friendly. Some issues with very few power outlets, but that is about it. I'll edit up some photos soon.

The UK wrap up post...a week late.

OK, so here we have a slightly late but entertaining bit. Two days after the train jumper-offer, we had a train jump in-fronter. Ewww. Needless to say it caused a delay as the driver was to shocked to carry on. I got into London OK that weekend and met up with some Welsh friends to have a night out before heading off to the SW for my last few days. Many, many drinks in many bars in the "interesting" SoHo area later, we saw Fergie (or formerly/kinda with the Black Eyed Peas chick) come on stage for all of three numbers. Not sure if it was worth the wait, but it was a bit more remarkable than sitting on my butt all night.

Did a little wandering around the Covent Garden area and its ritzy shops and old pubs the next day and afternoon. Did you know it actually was named in a spelling error. "Convent Garden" was the original name. Funny. Hopped yet another train for Taunton in Somerset. We did not have anyone climb on or jump off in irregular ways, but we were late anyway.

Somerset, Exeter and Wochester we all great little bits of the smaller city/countryside in England. Beautiful little places with lots of charm. Its always stunning how much the country changes from region to region in the UK. Many times very distinctly in the time it would take you to drive across a medium sized US state. Met with several interesting businesses but each day was punctuated by a brewery. Darwin's Brewery, Cotleigh Brewery and the Weston's Cider Brewery. Perry. That is all I have to say. Yum.

Just for posterity, I'd like to point out that I'm not a complete lush. Its just hard NOT to drink when out with the British and when you job revolves around helping Food & Drink Companies in the UK (including breweries) make it to the US...you get in a situation or two where there will be drinks. Fabulous breweries though, most at least 100 years old (two much more) in their history with a mix of "ancient" technology and very modern process.

The flight home was the Premium Economy that I was SUPPOSED to have the first time. The big seats UPSTAIRS in the Virgin Atlantic Airliner. Very posh. I had to bounce through LA to get home a little earlier. Ya' see, Piggy and I are moving up to Daly City. It should cut down on both of our commutes and cut out the tolls as we will be on the peninsula. So, rent goes up but costs go down...and I can have more of my day that is NOT a commute. Hard to put a price on that. BUT, we now have an actual HOUSE so all of you wishing to visit have a place to stay and you don't have to worry about condo rules, neighbors, etc. Email me if you want the new address, etc.

I'm thinking about getting a dog.