I also do a mean "Parents Just Don't Understand." In a cockney accent.

I never told my brother, but last year when we went to Florida, our first option wasn't Tampa and Orlando, even though that's where we ended up going, and included a visit to him and his house. Our first option was Miami. We didn't go to Miami for vacation, though, because we thought it'd be expensive.

Just like when we went to Las Vegas for our last vacation before that -- we weren't going to go to Vegas, but we ended up picking that city because we thought Miami would be too ritzy for us.

As a result, I've always wanted to go to Miami, but have never been there. Instead, I'm just left looking at the snow that covers the ground 362 days a year here in Wisconsin and dreaming of the tropical paradise that sits on my own continent, so close and yet so untouchable, like the pie under the glass at the diner counter. Only with more palm trees.

Then I find out today that hotels in Miami Florida are not as expensive as I thought -- if I book them through Travel Today. Travel Today (Traveltoday.com) has deals on hotels all over the place, but who cares about those other, lesser cities in the US -- I can go to Miami, where I can stay in a 5-star hotel like The Sofitel Miami for the same price that I'd pay staying in any other hotel. Travel Today has rooms at that hotel for $145 per night. I paid way more than that for the hotel in Las Vegas, and that hotel wasn't very fancy. Plus it smelled like desperation and Ben-Gay.

There's none of that coming through in this photo:

And plus I'm in Miami-- home to Crockett & Tubbs, glamour, the celebrities, South Beach, the ocean, sun and swimming and maybe tidal pools. No more going to inferior cities for me. From here on out, I'm going to Miami. (Picture me rapping that like Will Smith.)