Back to the Land of Snow and Ice

But, oh my, it was glorious while it lasted...
They have the most amazing thing in Florida: it's called 'sunshine' - I can't recommend it enough.  
And, as if that weren't enough, they have stuff like this just sitting around doing nothing:

I spent many happy hours gawking at flowers and trees and leaves and birds.  Knowing that my future holds something similar will get me through the last chunk of winter up here. 

And the 1300 Mile Beer Run wrapup -
I wrapped the bottles in bubble wrap and taped them with electrical tape, then rolled them up in t-shirts and packed them into a hard-sided suitcase.  It had to go as checked luggage (because why on earth would they let us on the plane with bottles of beer in our carry-on luggage?  We might enjoy the flight or something...), so I turned my suitcase over to the nice man at Jet Blue and hoped for the best.
On arrival, I opened the suitcase, holding my breath.  The security people had obviously searched it, because they had retaped all my packing efforts with their own tape that said "Hey, yo, we been touching your stuff."  But I do have to say that they had taken extreme care with the beer - the bubble wrap had been rewrapped and taped very conscientiously with an eye to protecting the bottles.  Go Vermont TSA!!
And, for the record, the source for the magical beer is this brewery.  I figured I wouldn't mention the name if the beer turned out to be a big 'meh', but it was received with big grins and thumbs up by the connoisseurs I was making this beer run for.  (And the folk I met at the brewery were extremely nice, too!  Go visit!)